blog till you drop!
A cocktail of advertising, social media, and technology
Cobra Twindaloo
Nov 21st
Cobra recently created this Twitter micro-site to celebrate National Curry Week, whereby Twitter users can enter their @names and Tweet their curry type.
The activity aims to reinforce Cobra’s positioning as the beer of choice when eating a curry.
There are however a number of fails in their approach:
- I would have liked to see a big ‘Tweet your curry type’ button on the Twitter micro-site. Their share this button isn’t particularly user-friendly. In addition, no Twitter hashtag was included in the Tweets.
- The Twitter micro site doesn’t link back to their main corporate website and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when clicking on the icons at the bottom of the screen; I ended up Googling ‘Cobra Beer’ to find their main website
- This is when I found out about ‘Facebook Group’, which is in fact a Fan Page (only 61 fans at time of writing). I am pretty sure the numbers would have been much higher had a big fat ‘Join our Facebook Fan Page’ button been included on the Twitter micro-site.
It is a nice campaign and Cobra are adding value to beer and curry lovers; saying that would strongly recommend they hire a new social media strategist who knows the difference between a Facebook Group and a Fan Page!
It’s a real shame as this campaign had a lot of potential…
UPDATE: I have just found out that my former employer Shiny Red, as well as a number of other agencies are behind this campaign. Apologies to Shiny Red about the rant; I genuinely didn’t know you were behind this!
Should bloggers get paid to write blog posts?
Nov 15th
3-4 PR pitches land in my inbox each week; I don’t mind being pitch and will happily write about brands and products provided the content is relevant to my blog.
An agency recently offered me €70 to write about their latest social media campaign; this made feel somewhat uncomfortable as I don’t think that bloggers should be paid to write about brands/products and I think this is a worrying trend…
I am very much pro-incentivising bloggers for their time but favour product-based incentives, thus giving bloggers the opportunity to experience the brand/product in question first-hand.
What do you guys think? Should bloggers get paid to write blog posts?
UPDATE 17th November 2009:
- Matt Churchill: PR agencies must not pay bloggers
- Ben Cotton: The business of buying off bloggers
- Peter Sigrist: Blogging could disappear as quickly has it has risen
- PR Week article 25.11.09: PR community split over paying bloggers in PRWeek poll
We7 Valentine’s playlist… with a twist!
Feb 9th
Valentine’s Day – some love it, others hate it (a bit like Marmite…)
The folks at We7 recently asked me to put together a Valentine’s playlist, and as I’ll be DJing on Saturday night, I just thought it would be a fab opportunity to compile a few cool R&B/Funky House tracks for my Saturday night set!
We7 is a pretty cool site; it’s dead easy to use (unlike Last fm), and you can listen to hours of music (unlike iTunes!!!) for free! The Seldom Kid has put together both a pro-Valentine’s Day playlist as well an Anti-Valentine’s day playlist – have a listen when you have a spare minute!
Here’s my Valentine’s playlist… with a Twist!
And because we haven’t had a meme in absolutely ages, I’d like to tag Sylwia, Gary, Jessica, Indiekrush and Neil – I look forward to listening to your fav tunes 
UPDATE: By a strange twist of fate, I got pitched a few days ago by a friend who works for We7, before I found out that Shiny Red did some work for We7 last year! I just thought I would point out that this post is not related to any work Shiny Red is currently doing for We7.
This blog is of course a personal blog and the views expressed here are mine, and not necessarily those of Shiny Red.
WOM vs. Digital PR (#mcl2)
Dec 19th
Barcamps are great to exchange ideas with fellow professionals you would never otherwise met. Around 40 marketing professionals braved the rain to attend Media Camp London #2 last Saturday. The interesting Twitter chatter that took place on the day can be found right here.
One of the sessions I took part in, led me to think about the differences between WOM and digital PR, and this post attempts to identify the subtle nuances between both disciplines.
WOM, is a reference to the passing of information from person to person. Word of mouth marketing which emcompasses a variety of sub-categories, including buzz, blog, viral, grassroots, cause influencers and social media marketing, as well as ambassador programmes, work with consumer generated media and more.
Source: Wikipedia
WOM Marketing campaigns tend to include the biggies; influencer marketing i.e. blogs integrated with Twitter, Flickr, FriendFeed and sometimes social networks such as Facebook which all play a distinctive role as part of an integrated social media campaign.
The aim of WOM marketing to influence the online decision-making process and ultimately lead to purchase.
Assume I am in the market for a new Skypephone – as an Internet addict, I would probably use resources such as 3mobilebuzz to find out about the the service and mobile phone reviews. Reading about people’s experiences about a mobile phone or a provider is likely to influence my decision.
WOM Marketing is therefore a long-term effort that aims to create a community of brand ambassadors, who are promoting a brand and influencing other consumers with their reviews.
I see Digital PR, on the other hand, as a short-term strategic effort.
Digital public relations, or interactive PR, is the use of Internet tools and technologies such as search engines, Web 2.0 social bookmarking, new media relations, blogging and social media marketing. Interactive PR allows companies and organizations to disseminate information without relying solely on mainstream publications and communicate directly with the public, customers and prospects.
Source: Wikipedia
Digital PR is well -suited – probably more so than advertising – to handle whatever programs a company or brand launches in the Web 2.0 space; PR practitioners are well-versed in managing conversations.
Digital PR practitioners can be compared to brand image consultants - they interact with influencers and online communities, listen to consumers and respond to them.
In terms of execution, Digital PR campaigns tend to place greater emphasis on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace or Bebo. Engaging communities via social networks is much harder than engaging bloggers who are constantly active online which is the reason why I see digital PR a short-term strategic effort.
What are your thoughts on this? I’d really love to generate a debate on the topic
Are bloggers turning into puppets controlled by marketers?
Nov 7th
Social Media Marketing / WOM Marketing / Digital PR – an increasing number of brands are trying to engage with consumers using social media these days.
Social Media is impacting on the decision making process, and marketers have jumped at the opportunity to use bloggers’ influence to get reviews about their products. It’s cheaper than traditional marketing and it seems to work (for now anyway…)
As a blogger and WOM Marketing specialist, I know how things work both from a blogger’s perspective as well as behind the scenes, crafting campaigns and deciding which bloggers we should engage with. [NB: 'engaging' as opposed to targeting']
One of my Twitter contacts recently told me about Social Media Library, a website that specialises in ‘providing PR and marketing professionals with up-to-date information on the most influential social media sites in the UK.’ Funnily enough, the folks at Social Media Library called me at work this morning… needless to say, they had a bit of a shock when I told them I was both a blogger and a WOM specialist!
Social Media Library is essentially a database of blogs sold to marketers, and the scary thing is that they pretty much know everything about you – your age, which city you live in, what you blog about, your interests, how influential you are, quite literally everything! How scary is that?!
I am passionate about WOM Marketing (that’s what I do for a living after all!) provided campaigns are exciting for bloggers, and social media engagement ethical.
Such a database shows, in my opinion, a lack of respect towards bloggers. We are not writing puppets! If you want to get bloggers involved in a campaign , get to know them, read their blogs, engage with them, and avoid buying a database!
I’d like to ask fellow bloggers and PR / WOM / Social Media specialists what they think…