Judging by the amount of recruitment news this week, it appears plenty of folk began the year looking for greener pastures. Thick As Thieves has stolen Colenso BBDO’s art director Jae Morrison, marketing maven Simone Iles finds a new Post, Wellington Tourism gets some absolutely positive additions to the team, Paul Gardiner crosses the line wearing lycra, Gareth Davies joins RedYeti Films, Fee-fi-fo-fum finds the Ideas Shop, Market Pulse reaches for ignition, Hitchcock directs Flying Fish (no birds in sight), APN Outdoor’s Friends in High Places line-up gets a shakeup, The Sweet Shop moves even further into Asia, Prodigy signs Bradstreet boy, and Blair Haeata joins Ngage.
Browsing: Alex Erasmus
I recently read a great article in The Economist about Starbucks’ decision to remove the words ‘Starbucks’ and ‘coffee’ and also the circle around the siren from the logo. As the writer says, there are relatively few brands that are recognised purely by a logo—think Nike, Adidas, Playboy, McDonald’s and Apple. So it’s part of the evolution of a super brand to announce itself as such an integral part of our lives that words are no longer needed. The company now transcends the product itself, which tends to be tied in to the fact that it can now start selling things it wasn’t traditionally associated with. And for Starbucks, this means alcohol and various beverage accessories.
He’s one of the main brains behind Social Media Junction, he co-founded Media Mingle, Social Media Club Auckland and the marketing-related Twitter discussion #markchat, and he’s one of those rare creatures, a man working in PR. So here’s what floated—and sank—the boat of Bullet PR’s Alex Erasmus this year.
After skipping last week’s #markchat due to the Pike River memorial, the Twitter stream will once again be flowing freely at 12:30pm today, with the topic being ‘personal authenticity vs professional brand – where do they meet and diverge?’ Also, for all those unable to ‘attend’ the chat, we’ll choose the five most salient/interesting comments made during #markchat and a link to the summary blog post.
Six international speakers and a range of local big brains from varied marketing and communication backgrounds came together in Auckland this week for the second edition of Social Media Junction and presented their perspectives on acheiving ROI from social media activity. But ROI is perhaps the wrong phrase to describe what was discussed. With the benefit of hindsight, it was more about content marketing: you’re on social media platforms, but what are you saying, how are you saying it, when are you saying it and are the customers listening and then actually buying or recommending to someone else who buys? Anyway, enough with the questions, here’s what the speakers had to say.
Let this raging torrent of information wash over you and be cleansed by tales of NZ Herald iPad upgrades, new Tiger beer websites, Air New Zealand’s new charity promotion, DraftFCB’s tremendous victory, creative bangers getting mashed in Make Something, Down to the Wire looking for your e-memories, Telecom’s new roaming offer, #Markchat delving into a debate about agency collaboration, DSA awards deadlines and someone slapping design in the face.
Like any new form of marketing, there was plenty of trepidation when social media began to go mainstream. And some senior executives still feel the jury is out when it comes to investing large chunks of budget in it. They want to know how it’s going to feed back into the business, and rightly so. So while the first phase of social media—the one where people jump online and create profiles—has already happened, companies are still figuring out how to make the central theory behind social media (conversation, not broadcast) relevant to the entire business.
As someone who works on the strategic side of design, I’ve taken a keen interest in the rise of social media as a marketing tool. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading up on other people’s experiences and on the various benefits they have had (or not). And for some, it would be useful to know when there will be regular conversations around a topic of interest to tune into. Just as with TV or radio, we should tune in at specific times when we know we will find relevant, interesting content.
With the Social Media Junction 2 conference line-up now confirmed for 16-17 November 2010 at SkyCity in Auckland, it’s timely to discuss one its key themes: content marketing strategies. And, more specifically, the difference between doing social media and doing it right, a topic conference keynote speaker Lee Odden will delve into.
With the launch of the #NewTwitter, it seems apt to speak about what the changes might mean for the social space in terms of PR.
There have been lots of conversations recently about privacy, specifically in social media. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and head-honcho at Facebook, got very sweaty when discussing the topic recently. So if Mark Zuckerberg, one of the pioneers of the share everything world we live in, is getting sweaty about ongoing privacy concerns, then perhaps we should all be worrying.
Both traditional and social media juggernauts will be very well catered for in the coming days and weeks, with the inaugural Auckland Social Media Club event taking place on Tuesday 9 February at the 42 Below Bar and the next Media Mingle set for 23 February at Honey Bar.
A collection of Kiwi “social media practitioners” has banded together to kick off the New Zealand chapter of the Social Media Club, an organisation that started in 2006 in San Francisco and is active around the world.