Browsing: social media

News
To protect and serve (on toast): Sanitarium and Saatchi & Saatchi fan the Marmageddon flames
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Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. And, after the Sanitarium factory was knocked around by the Christchurch earthquakes, passionate yeast spreaders have been pining for their regular slathering of Black Gold. So, in what most see as a company making the best of a bad situation and what some cynics see as a stunt to raise the profile of the brand, Sanitarium and Saatchi & Saatchi launched the Don’t Freak Out campaign to assure eaters Marmite would be back. And it’s continued that approach with a competition asking Kiwis to prove how far they’ll go to protect their stash.

Opinion
Everything in moderation: why controversial Australian Standards Board decision on Facebook was the right call
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It seemed like such a good idea: Peanuts vs Cashews. Grab a handful, pelt your mates and discover once and for all who’s the real ‘King of the Nuts’. Then things went wrong. A rogue peanut bounced off a lamp-post, caught a cycle courier and tossed him in front of a bus. Luckily the bus swerved, no one was hurt and they only took out a small building. Rogue accident, you wouldn’t read about it (mostly because it didn’t happen). But it could. And the question on the table after a recent Australian Standards Board decision that has put the onus on brands to manage their Facebook pages is where does the buck stop when social goes awry?

News
The Choco-ade chronicles: how Griffin’s, Assignment Group and Amber Johnson created a monster
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Nostalgia’s not what it used to be. But when it comes to biscuits, it’s obviously still a very powerful force, because the decision to get behind a campaign started by Upper Hutt-based biscuit crusader Amber Johnson to bring back Choco-ades has well and truly paid off for Griffin’s, with AZTEC scan data figures showing it set a new benchmark as the top selling product by value in supermarkets in its first week of sales, beating the Avatar DVD.

News
Greasing the wheels of goodness
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Back in May, Mercury Energy sent its experimental ‘Good Energy Taxi’ onto the streets of Auckland. At the time, Tequila’s main brains Ross Howard said the motorised version of a karma bank was a bit of a double whammee, with the experiential element meaning a range of Kiwis came into contact with the taxi—either in person or via social media—and the footage taken from inside the cab being made into a short documentary that captured some of the Kiwi good sorts. And now you can check that documentary out.

Awards
Talkin’ bout a revolution
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The digital age is changing the way we live and work. And whatever your industry or interest, you’re part of the wave, like it or not. And digital media conference The Project, described as “a collision of thought on social media and digital communication”, is your chance to figure out how to ride it.

Opinion
A very Pinteresting breakfast
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The Marketing Association hosted yet another sell-out Brainy Breakfast event last week, with over 300 marketers filling the Crowne Plaza’s conference room ready to listen to international social media expert, Brian Giesen and Jennifer Duval-Smith, executive director at Social@Ogilvy in New Zealand, speak about Pinterest—and how to use it to leverage social media campaigns.

News
There’s gold in them thar social hills, says new McKinsey study
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There’s plenty of debate about how to measure the value of social media, and, in some cases, whether sites like Facebook and Twitter are at ‘the heart of a fallacy’ around online advertising. But, according to a new study by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), the business and economics research arm of McKinsey & Company, social technologies have the potential to raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25 percent, as information is made more accessible and searchable and communication streamlined.

News
Attack of the fakebots: are your social media followers real?
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Over the weekend, we received a message from Facebook’s account manager Adnan Khan asking us to consider adopting Facebook’s Social Plugin commenting system on StopPress, as it would increase the authenticity of the conversations and reduce the number of “faceless trolls” and offensive comments (if you’re so inclined, you can comment on StopPress stories through Facebook, Twitter or Google by logging-in to Disqus). So we couldn’t help but revel in the irony when ComputerWorld published an article yesterday about the fact that, according to social media management tool Status People, 94 percent of Khan’s almost 30,000 Twitter followers were fake.

Opinion
The Facebook fallacy and the problem with personalisation
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I remember when Michael Wolff was very bullish about the internet in the 1990s, so when he starts sounding warning bells, we had better take heed. And the way he paints Facebook—and a belief that its advertising model will eventually collapse for being so limited—is not unfamiliar to anyone who ever wondered, during the dot-com boom, just why those companies were worth that much.

News
More than words: Saatchi & Saatchi’s social media campaign for Women’s Refuge
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Every year the Women’s Refuge receives 60, 565 calls (about one every nine minutes) from women silenced through violence, intimidation and abuse. But with only 50 to 60 percent of its work funded by government, the organisation relies heavily on public donations and in a bid to bolster those finances, Saatchi & Saatchi has created an innovative Facebook app as part of its Donate Your Words campaign.

News
LG turns Facebook fan posts into live entertainment
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Social media has forever changed the way we connect with each other and while some detractors are averse to sharing snapshots of their lives with the online community, LG and its advertising agency Y&R, are hedging their bets that members of the public will be keen to have their Facebook posts not only publicised, but brought to life by a team of performers and artist Otis Frizzell thanks to a gigantic 26-foot high bricks-and-mortar Facebook wall built in Auckland’s Aotea Square

News
Facebook and the old fake bagel company trap
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The effectiveness of advertising on Facebook is being called into question once again following revelations from the BBC that its ‘VirtualBagel’ experiment, an imaginary business that tech reporter Rory Cellan-Jones started in a bid to test it, received 3,000 ‘likes’ within four days, despite the fact that it offered no products or interesting content.

News
Air New Zealand’s social calendar
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Air New Zealand filled up a room with social media sponges and marketers yesterday to hear Randi Zuckerberg, the former Facebook marketing director and less famous sister of Mark (some might say she’s the female equivalent of Doug Pitt) and Wildfire’s Jessica Gilmartin speak. And if any Kiwi company was going to sponsor a social media breakfast, it would have to be the very socially active national carrier. But in case you haven’t been paying attention over the past few very difficult years in the aviation industry, it has put together a video explaining the airline’s approach to social media and showing what it has managed to achieve as a result of its focus on it .

News
The power of like: how to win Facebook friends—and influence people’s purchase behaviour
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Many believe the US$108 billion valuation of Facebook, which started off at US$38 a share and has fallen back to around US$31 a share, was based on “option value”; on the future money-making potential of what Wired writer Steven Johnson feels is becoming a monopoly. The social networking behemoth has certainly been under the pump in the media since the IPO, but research released yesterday about the powerful effect both earned and paid messages have on purchase behaviour offered some welcome good news.

News
Kiwi copywriter on epic cycling adventure: you vote, she pedals
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When most people go on holiday they like to know where they  are going and what they’ll be doing, but Indiana June is not like most people. Ex-pat Kiwi Diana Tansey, aka Indiana June, has chucked in her copy writing career to cycle around the world, traveling to wherever social media decides.   

News
Social media is dead, long live the website
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“Could this be the last SMC event? Is social media an over-hyped distraction from the real centre of activity online: your website?” This is the provocative topic for a Social Media Club discussion being held this evening at Telecom’s flash new premises. There’s been some interesting pre-event roasting and, as a keynote speaker, I thought perhaps a video blog would be a fun and interactive way for those who couldn’t make it a long to feel like they were there. For those who want to follow the conversation and participate in heckling, check #smcakl.

News
Whack-a-Drunk (or not)
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While there’s numerous graphic commercials on television utilising the gory shock factor to ram home the message about the perils of drink driving, Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) Ltd has devised an interactive approach to encourage responsible drinking. Represented in New Zealand by DB Breweries, APB is playing responsible corporate …

News
From the few to the many: a quest for social media buy-in
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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.

News
Charity or opportunism, that is the question
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We’re big fans of heated debates here at StopPress and a heated debate kicked off yesterday after the Christchurch earthquake relief efforts of t-shirt company Mr Vintage were pegged by Ana Samways in her NZ Herald Sideswipe column as a cynical marketing ploy to try and make a quick buck from the disaster.

Opinion
Smackdown laid, can of whoop ass opened on SMEGS
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As I’m sure you’re all aware, this week is SMEG Awareness Week. Social media expert guru (SMEG) numbers have been increasing in New Zealand in the last 12 months due to a combination of the tidal impacts on the Orinoco river and the recession. So here’s a handy field guide to help you spot them.

News
For future services to the bottom line, arise, Sir Social Media
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Love it or loathe it, social media has become an extremely powerful communications force in recent times. And, according to Nielsen’s 2010 Social Media Report, its marketing star continues to rise in New Zealand as users start interacting more with brands online and rely on their social networks to guide purchasing decisions.

Opinion
Facebook: it’s about money, not privacy
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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.

Opinion
Web boffin eyes paragraph to his left suspiciously
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Questions were asked and the answers were given by Julien Smith, the keynote speaker at the upcoming Social Media Junction and New York Times bestselling co-author of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, which was singled out by Amazon.com as one of the top 10 business and investing books of 2009.

Opinion
How much is your fan worth?
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Mashable recently published an article highlighting research done by a social media management firm called Virtue, which looked at the value of a Facebook fan. According to its research, a fan was worth US$3.60 per year. Bear with me as I get mathematical.

News
Staying friends with Facebook
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Facebook updated its terms of service in December 2009 and in doing so incurred a user backlash against some of the changes. This backlash largely related to ownership of material posted onto users’ and brands’ Facebook pages, with the new terms of service suggesting that content posted on Facebook pages becomes the property of Facebook.

Awards
Social Media Junction
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If you have quite the appetite for social media marketing, here’s something for you to savour. May 17th sees the arrival of Social Media Junction. This conference incorporates a range of new media visionaries from the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who will offer their insights into how …

News
Rude, abusive but legal – how to handle toxic comments
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Rude, abusive and offensive; it all makes good reading but publishers of social media — who can range from bloggers and niche media to mega-corporations and governments — must deal with the difficult question of what to do when comments go bad. On the one hand, you want to let comments flow freely (this is a democracy still, I think). On the other hand, some comments are anonymous, abusive, stupid and occasionally defamatory.

What’s a poor boy to do?

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