blog till you drop!
A cocktail of advertising, social media, and technology
Customer service 2.0 – Easyjet
Dec 18th
I had a bit of an epic journey attempting to travel back to Lyon for the festive season today. I missed my 5AM train to Gatwick, jumped on a taxi and arrived at the airport only to be informed that my Easyjet flight was delayed. Armed with a good book and a very large cup of black coffee, little did I know that my journey would turn into a nightmare. I won’t bore you with all the details (it took me ages to get my suitcase back and I ended up being stranded in Croydon!) but Easyjet have been doing a tremendous job helping stranded travellers throughout the day via Twitter.
This is a little thank you blog post for being there and sending us the info we couldn’t get from airport staff – keep up the good work folks!
The Socialisation of TV Advertising
Nov 11th
TV is becoming increasingly social. As Neil points out, Twitter went into complete overdrive over the X-Factor last Sunday following Lucie Jones’ shock eviction, with 8 out of the top 10 Twitter trending topics being X-Factor related*.
I got rid of my TV when I moved in my flat last year; my flat is on the small side, and I prefer to indulge in catch up TV these days.
BBC Iplayer offers ad-free programmes whilst ITV and Channel 4 still broadcast ads.
Interestingly, catch up TV ads are interactive in a Spotify clickable banners kind of way – when you click on the ads, you’ll get redirected to the brand’s website as shown in the clip below.
McDonald’s recently launched their Flavourhood Campaign with ads running both on catch up TV and Spotify. This combination of old and new media allows marketers to broadcast their push message, whilst still letting consumers engage with the brand on the social web.
Admittedly, it’s a little tricky to watch TV whilst playing with a website, but I’ve been known to be quite good at multi-tasking!
* NB: I’d like to invite my US readers to check out Lucie Jones‘ vs. Jedward’s performance, who survived the x-factor eviction last Sunday! No, I am not kidding!
Adventures in Twitterland… (bring back the link love)
Oct 15th
Funny things often happen in Twitterland… Today’s randomness definitely got me LOLing away behind my screen…
Back in the old days, bloggers used to link back to one another other as a sign of appreciation, and an effective way of sharing content. Linking back also helped increase our Page Rank and Technorati authority; we (bloggers) call this the Link Love. With conversations now moving to Twitter, linking back to other bloggers is sadly a behaviour in decline…
In an attempt to help my friends with their Page Rank, I’d like to introduce you to my blogging buddies Nicolas the Frenchie (who’s going to kill me for calling him Frenchie 
), pun-extraordinaire Hayley, Italiano vero Matteo and last but certainly not least, Gavin Heaton of Servant of Chaos fame who inspired me to write this post!
As always thanks for reading 
Bloggers, #LBM, Havana and a Twitter Treasure Hunt
Oct 12th
Last week’s London Bloggers meet up was sponsored by Havana who managed spice our lives up by bringing a piece of Cuba to London. Thanks again guys for the delicious Mojitos and the lovely night!
Havana an exciting piece of news they’d like to share with you hence the blog post…
Havana Cultura, a global art initiative from Havana Club rum is launching the ‘Havana Twitter Treasure Hunt’ starting next week (Monday 19th October).
Using clues posted on Twitter, you will get the chance to virtually explore the city of Havana’s parks, hills, and crashing coast line and hang out in the neighbourhoods of famous Cuban directors and musicians on www.havana-cultura.com to find the clues.
The winner of the Twitter treasure hunt will win two VIP tickets to Gilles Peterson’s exclusive Havana Cultura album launch party (we had a listen at the album at #LBM last week, and it’s pretty awesome… trust me on that one!) in Paris on 26th November. The winner will travel to Paris with a friend via Eurostar and spend three nights in a hotel near the launch party venue . Pretty cool, huh?
The aim of the project is to give modern Cuban artists, from the city of Havana, a unique platform to showcase their work internationally and convey their true way of life. Each of the artists featured on www.havana-cultura.com introduce their favourite place in the vibrant city of Havana, to give visitors insight from the perspective of a true local. This competition is in a nutshell, a virtual tour of Havana powered by Twitter
How to take part in the Twitter hunt:
- Follow @_HavanaCultura_ on Twitter
- The treasure hunt will run for two weeks starting on Monday 19th October at 13pm and the last clue will be Tweeted on Friday 30th October at 5PM
- There are ten clues in total; two clues will be released twice daily – at 1pm and 5pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday – solved clues needs to be posted on Twitter using the hashtag #havanatreasurehunt
On your marks, ready, get Tweeting!
Good luck everyone and don’t forget to spread the word about the competition! The more the merrier! 
Top Twitter Tools & Apps – September 2009
Sep 25th
Here’s my selection of top Twitter tools for September 2009; in no particular order:
1) CoTweet: A fantastic service for managing multiple Twitter accounts, ‘CoTweet is a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter’ and also lets you monitor trends for each account
2) UberTwitter: the must have app for your Blackberry, UberTwitter easily lets you favourite tweets, check your @replies and DMs as you would on a desktop
3) Topsy: Topsy is a ’search engine powered by Tweets’ and a fantastic monitoring tool to find out who’s Tweeting what (most Tweeted links) about your brand
4) Twitter Search Results on Google (hat tip to the lovely @msamayoa): Ever fancied adding Twitter search onto your Google search results? You can now do that by downloading Firefox add-on Greasemonkey combined with the Twitter Search Results userscript – see screenshot below.
Previously in this series: Top 5 Twitter Tools – June 2009
Have I missed anything out? What other Twitter tools and apps do you use?