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Targeting Twitter’s audience by the TV that they watch

The future, I sees it –

Back in September last year, I put together a few ideas about what evolutions we might see in the social media industry during 2013. Snappily entitled ‘2013 Social Media Predictions‘, one of the areas focused on was how Social TV and advertising would need to work closer together if they planned to meaningfully speak to their audiences across multiple different platforms.

Quote:

“…Soon smart media-planners will force Twitter to allowÂ time-sensitiveÂ promoted tweets, withÂ time-focused twitter ads designed to populate at specific times â€“ down to the very minute. Whereas the traditional consumer used to put the kettle on, todayâ€™s viewers are now turning to Twitter (andÂ awayÂ from the ads), the industry wonâ€™t put up with this for long.”

Makes sense, right? Of course it does. So it came as no surprise at all to read that, thanks to the advent of Twitter’s new Ad API, the smart folk at TBG Digital have done just that.

Introducing Calendar Live, a new platform that Â allows buyers to purchase Promoted Tweets in sync with television programmes. It’s that simple. While it’s true that marketers could kind of do this already, this new system makes it supremely easierÂ and brings in additional features such as trend monitoring and more granular time-targeting.

Bonus simplicity: it looks just like your TV guide –Â

While this isn’t the kind of ad-based scheduling I was initially talking about, itÂ is a step towards a more connected approach to social media ad-planning. Good work Twitter, and well done TBG. We’ve been looking at a number of solutions to manage our approach to social media and TV of late, and Calendar Live looks like it might actually have something useful to both brands and agencies alike.

Three final points:

With similar fantastic work taking placeÂ right now in the form of Three’sÂ #DancePonyDance, this kind of integration really is the at the forefront of where social media, and thus social TV, is headed during 2013.
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SXSW is on right now which, to me at least, means big news like this gets swept away under the mess of it all. Rule one: don’t launch during SXSW.
Â –
I love it whenÂ I’m right.
-Â

You should come to #NotatSXSWLDN

Let me tell you why…

Set to be the best ‘Not at’ event EVER, #NotatSXSWLDN is to be held Friday March 15th and you are invited.

Not making out to Austin this year?
Finding the whole thing just too darn over-hyped and over-priced?
Looking for some FREE inspiration on a Friday night?

Then JOIN US for NOT AT SXSW – LONDON EDITION where we can get together, drink, and generally have an awesome time.

On top of that we’re bringing you an awesome venue (I’m not kidding), an amazing set of speakers (who are bringing along their very own ‘shot of south by’) and of course, a stunningly beautiful group of attendees (that’s YOU).

So please, come hang out at the coolest new members club in town and enjoy a night of brilliance created especially for you.

You’re coming, right? Good.

Because tickets are available now.

———–

We’re also currently taking sponsorship so, if you’d like to know more, please take a look at our background documentation and get in touch ASAP.

5 things brands can learn from the Bieber debacle

Come on, you all knew this was coming.

It has not been a good few days for the global superstar. Where do we begin?

The #BieberBacklash (yes, that’s actually a hashtag) began when he had the ‘worst birthday‘ after being ejected from a London club for allegedly smuggling underage fans/guestsÂ through the door.

It’s a tough life, right?Â #BieberProblems.

Then, over the weekend, a seeminglyÂ innocuousÂ tweet kicked off a fracas after Beiber RT’d a (SHOCK HORROR) a non-fan for saying she liked his new album.

The Â Drum reports:

‘A succession of embittered fans jealous that their idol had deigned to retweet someone other than themselves who wasnâ€™t a â€˜realâ€™ fan duly emerged with a series of hate filled tweets; including @julietesqueda who wrote: â€˜Not really a fan of Justin Bieber but his acoustic album is really good!â€™’

Finally, last night, the Biebs was not one but two hours late arriving on stage on the opening night of his four day stint at the O2 . On a schoool night too? Never.Â Never say never.Â

But OK, let’s look at this properly – what can brands learn from this?

1. Think before you Tweet
A few years ago, an agency head got into trouble after being somewhat unkind about the city where his main client was based. A silly error and, looking back through the mist of social media evolution, it seems like it’s a mistake of days gone by. But still, the lesson stands true: think before you tweet and never, ever tweet angry.

2. Reward existing fans, as well as new ones
Advocacy is everything. And, as innocent as it is to celebrate the acquisition of a new fan, treating all others in the same way will reap the benefits in the long term. In short: existing customers matter. Many service providers have got into the habit of offering their latest and best promotions (or at least deals of equal value) to both sets of customers. In future, Bieber might do too.

Sidenote: see also the death of ‘Our 2000th follower wins X!’ competitions. If you see this in action, call it out! Â Why would anyone want to reward this brand new person when the 1999 have been supporting your growth along the way? It doesn’t make sense.

3. Know your audience
Whenever you kick off ANY kind of social media activity it is essential you understake a number of listening exercises to not only understand the current landscape of the market you’re working in but to also understand your audience. If Bieber had any insight – or had done any research – he would’ve known the following:

Monday night is a school night yo!
Travelling in (and out of) London late at night isn’t a fantastic experience (especially for young kids)
If he didn’t hear the boos from his dressing room then he certainly should/could have read about their disappointment online

4. Under-promise, over-deliver
Keeping your brand promises my seem like an easy and obvious one but it’s amazing how often many different brands forget this (at the expense of their fans and consumers). If you’re going to promise an AMAZING concert to all of your LOVING fans at a specific time, then you better make sure it happens.

And if you don’t – if you over-promise and under-deliver -well, then you really need to –

5. Invest in a Crisis Comms plan
Plan for the worst. Know what to do when things go wrong. At the time of writing, the Biebmeister is still yet to address the wealth of disappointed fans that had to leave the O2 early last night. A good crisis comms plan would know what to do in this situation: be that have the man(?) himself apologise on stage or even consider refund the ticket money – there are many different ways he could make this situation better. 12hrs later: none are yet to appear.

Irrespective of your opinion on Bieber-mania, there are a many, many unhappy fans sitting down at school today who feel let down by their beloved idol.

Read over the above again and just think: could it happen to you?

Â Image via Adam Sundana on Flickr

Starting something new.

Heading up social media for a monumentally networked and globally massive ad agency is definitely a new one on me. Ish. But this blogging thing? I can do this.Â

Hi. I’m James Whatley, and I head social media for Soho Square London, the Ogilvy agency dedicated to integration.
A few things to know:

We’re not actually based in Soho Square (Canary Wharf for us – hurrah for geographical confusion!).
Soho Square (the agency) has been around for ten years or so and can count offices based in New York, Singapore, Sao Paulo and a fair few other places too.
Our social arm (and team) has the full support of the Social@Ogilvy network and isÂ growing.

We relaunched the website earlier this year and, as part of that relaunch, I’ve been given my very own corner to plant and grow a brand new blog (hurrah again!). What’s it for? Sharing news, opinion, and general thought-leadership.Â It’s so good, you’re reading it already.

Stay tuned.

Ps. Want to know more? Get in touch.

The Nokia MD-310: a real-world NFC use-case

No, seriously.Â

Honest to God, I genuinely have found a piece of NFC kit that not only works really well, but also fixes a problem I didn’t know I had.

I was at Nokia’s fancy new London HQ recently and I spotted the above piece of tech hanging up on the wall in the lobby. ‘I want one of these!‘ I cried. And lo and behold, a couple of weeks later, one arrived in the post for me to review. Hurrah for the internets.

So what does it actually do?

The Nokia MD-310 is, in a nutshell, an NFC-enabled bluetooth receiver for your home stereo. How that translates into the real world is as follows:

That shiny circular thing in the photo plugs into my audio system and sits nicely in my front room. Whenever I get home from work, or from a run, and I want to carry on listening to the music on my handset, I just tap my device on the glowing circle and, two seconds later, my tunes switch from my headphones to my speakers.

Simple.

How is this a problem I didn’t know I had? Well I only really use my main music system for music these days. It’s a gorgeous Marantz surround sound set which only gets to stretch its legs when I watch a film or want to get super-immersed in an Xbox game.

It misses music, much.

Having the MD-310 (gotta do something about that name) to hand means that not only can I play music from my phone from a simple tap, but I can also share my music from my Mac via bluetooth too. This is nothing short of brilliant. And it’s this multi-platform compatibility that makes this an essential piece of kit for me.

It’s quite amazing to know that these things were launched over 18mths ago now but, with the prevalence of NFC increasing month on month, this accessory deserves the timely resurgence it seems to be having.

They’re just overÂ Â£40 on Amazon right now and, given some places have them up for nearly double that(!), I’d say the MD-310 is worth a look.

It’s useful, it’s kinda cool looking (I think I’d preferÂ a black one though) and my home stereo system has never been happier.

FUTURE: ENABLED.

Charles Olive

They design bow ties, so you don’t have to.

In short: Charles Olive is an accessories label specialising in bow ties. They love bow ties but apparently it’s often difficult to find one that excites.

This is why they set up their label.

Their tagline ‘Designed in Excel. Handmade in Britain.’ makes me smile every time I read it.

Need a high-class bow tie? Speak to Charles Olive.

If you’ve ever considered buying one, make it from this man.

Trimming in Public â€“ Part 6

Clearing out my RSS, 10 feeds at a time –

Background.

Let’s do this –

Creative Social Blog
It took me a good five minutes to work out how or why I was subscribed to this blog in the first place. I think it was back in Feb 2012 when I read about one of their events, ‘F*** that’s good‘. ‘This event looks ace!’ I thought, promptly buying two tickets for a friend and I. Mentioned as the very last item on this list, I really don’t think it’s good enough to stay.
Decision: Remove

Criterion Games
The blog of the developers behind one of the most epic run of racing games ever (read: the Burnout collection), Criterion Games don’t really update that much. Even less so since they were bought by EA and subsequently handed the keys to the Need for Speed franchise. However I really can’t bring myself to unsubscribe because a) they seem like an awesome bunch of guys and b) the Burnout Paradise 2 rumour mill has recently started churning and well, I’m staying tuned.
Decision: Keep

Dan’s Blog (2.0)
The blog of one Daniel K. Appelquist. Product Manager at BlueVia, founder of a whole ton of mobile-related good stuff, and generally one of the smartest mobile web-heads I know. My RSS has a fair sprinkling of big thinkers and Dan is one of them. This one is easy.
Decision: Keep

Darth Mojo
Man, this makes me sad. I looked up this link and thinking: ‘What’s this one?’ – arrived, saw that there’d been no updates since Nov ’11 and thought, ‘What the hell did I subscribe for?’. Then I clocked it: Mojo used to be the visual effects supervisor on Babylon 5, Star Trek: Voyager, and Battlestar Galactica – his blog is a GOLD MINE of awesome geeky stuff. But, as I said, alas he hasn’t posted since 2011 and well, that sucks.
Decision: Remove

Dear London Town
The blog of lovely american Kate Matlock. I like Kate so Kate’s blog can stay.
Decision: Keep

Design Idea
Interaction designer, ex-googler-now-at-Fjord-er, Rebecca Cottrell, has a unique way of looking at the world. You should see it some time.
Decision: Keep

design mind – business. technology. design.
I initially signed up to Frog’s blog purely to catch the occasional post from long-time industry hero of mine, Jan Chipchase. But now I just read it because it’s awesome. You should too.
Decision: Keep

(dot dot dot) Lies the Universal
The blog of the illustrator and writer Morgan Jeske. He’s not blogging here anymore, but hey! He’s on Twitter, so I guess that’s OK.
Decision: Remove

Eat Sleep Social – Mike Phillips
I like smart social people. Mike Phillips is a smart social plannery person. He gets to stay.
Hey Mike! Blog more, yeah?
Decision: Keep

Elise Pearce
I’m quite sad that Elise has stopped blogging (I haven’t seen her in AGES) but she’s an ACE photographer so go check her out on Flickr instead. I can’t remove it, just in case she makes a comeback. Maybe…
Decision: Keep

Part 7 coming soon (when I get ’round to it).

A day in the life

Of me, not this box – I just like the photo

Recently, on the way back to London after a client meeting, I had an urge to get home and make shoot some stop-motion video. I’ve done a few before and, well, I enjoy it.

Upon expressing this to a colleague, he replied: ‘That’s great! But, I have to ask something: where do you find the time? I love photography but never find the time do it…’

My response?

‘Discipline, time-compression, and a commitment to no wastage are all key. Make [and keep] promises to yourself. For example, I try to do keep Thursday lunchtimes free each week to work on a project of my own choosing. Try that, and then build from there’.

And then thought about it some more and figured that some more analysis might be useful. It’s been a while since I’ve written up my day like this (five years in fact), so this should be interesting (for me, at least).

So here goes: my diary/schedule for Thursday 7th February 2013 –

05:45 – Alarm goes off (on my phone, of course).

05:55 – Record Episode 035 of The Voicemail. We normally try and record on a Thursday night but Stefan is traveling at the moment and he’s being replaced by various guests from all across the globe. This week’s guest was based on the East Coast and it was easier for both of us to shoot at this time.

06:50 – 5k run (yup, up to 5k now – every other day too. I’ve come a long way in five weeks, I think a follow up post may be required)

07:40 – Home, shower, get ready for work.

08:00 – Leave for the office.

08:10 – Commute / reading time (current book:Â What the Plus! by Guy Kawasaki, a recommendation from Stephen Waddington).

08:50 – Pick up breakfast / coffee.

09:00 – Call with an industry peer and trusted friend to discuss a future project.

09:15 – Email, team meetings, catch up with yesterday’s actions / meetings.

10:30 – Social@Ogilvy training workshop (part one)

12:50 – Lunch. Eat. Check in with the team. Thursday project alarm goes off, so I call the venue for #NotatMWC and tell them we’re going to need more room.

13:30 – Social@Ogilvy training workshop (part two)

16:00 – Re-group with team, catch up on projects; share lessons from the workshop. Email.

Sidenote: I’ve got into the habit of screening email whenever possible and only sitting down to respond once or twice a day. It’s helping productivity incredibly. I understand that not everyone can do this, but when you get to the point of being able to – I highly recommend it.Â

18:05 – leave the office

18:10 – Commute. Manage to get a seat and start editing the morning’s Voicemail episode (much to my enjoyment – you can’t read audio waves over someone’s shoulder).

18:40 – Stop in town to pick up a cable for my mac, plus stop for a cup of tea with a friend.

19:45 – Time to head home.

20:15 – Get home: dinner, publish The Voicemail, hug the girl, watch a movie (Contagion – dark, yet dull).

23:55 – Time for bed.

Sprinkle the above with a few bits of social media usage (I count 36 tweets, including RTs etc, two Facebook updates, and one G+ update – mainly in the bits between doing anything, ie: walking between stations etc) and that’s just about it.

Alright that was all a bit full on and most days I don’t do workshops, nor do I get up before 6am to record international podcasts, but still – there’s hardly any ‘dead’ time in my day. Ever. But that’s not to say I don’t ever stop, I just didn’t happen to stop on Thursday.

Brazil is the Social Media Capital of The World

Surprised? No, I’m not either. But why?

Image via Ndecam

This needs some analysis. First off, the numbers are incredible –

65m Facebook users (second largest market for the platform)
Brazilians spent 41% more time on Twitter in 2012 vs 2011
Facebook dwell time grew 208% (while the rest of the world dropped by 2%)
129.3m online users
21 billion online searches
Second largest consumer of YouTube videos (the US is at number one)
Top five active user group for Twitter
Expected $81 billion of ad spend in 2013

And this is expected to grow even further. Especially as, come 2015, the country will be the recipient of a 100-gb-per-sec internet connection to carry all of that data.

Interestingly, Twitter has chosen SÃ£o Paulo as its Brazilian base and is in the process of hiring like crazy as I type. Why is this interesting?

Over the past few years SÃ£o Paulo (and the ad agencies therein) have been producing the stellar kind of creative work that anyone would be proud to put their name against. Everything from the $73,000 bar tab, through to getting your face printed on a Burger King Whopper; it’s actually really quite hard to get through one page of Brandflakes for Breakfast without stumbling upon something awesome from SÃ£o Paulo.

Innovative, smart, ground-breaking – all of it social, all of it awesome.

But whyÂ SÃ£o Paulo? Well, you could say that culturally Brazil is more open and friendly, and therefore more creative. You could also say that the way of life and perhaps the weather over there inspires creativity and innovation.

Personally, I think there’s something else. Ready?

How about this: outdoor advertising is banned* in SÃ£o Paulo.

Introducing the ‘Clean City Law‘ –

In 2006, Gilberto Kassab, mayor of SÃ£o Paulo, Brazil, passed the “Clean City Law.” Citing growing concerns about rampant pollution in his city, Kassab decided enough was enough. But this was no ordinary piece of pollution legislation. Rather than going after car emissions or litterbugs, Kassab went after the billboards. Kassab wanted to crack down on “visual pollution.”

That visual pollution? Outdoor ads. Amazing. And the city has never been happier! Hurrah!

As mentioned, this law came into being during 2006 – the year that some might argue that social media started its way down the long road to success. So now you have a whole bunch of brands with outdoor money to spend elsewhere. Where does it go? Into better creative and, of course, new channels – such as social media.

Today, Brazil is the social media capital of the world. They’re hosting the next Olympics and the next World Cup.Â SÃ£o Paulo is an ad-free zone and it drives creativity in all sorts of awesome and inspiring ways.

I might be talking rubbish, but I genuinely believe there’s a connection.

That’s all I got.

*this is not news, I know – but I only found this out this week and I still find it mental

Additional sources: WSJ, The Wall.

37mins of WIN: the Social Media Week in Review