I have three items of any value that I call my own: two Montblanc ballpoints and a Montblanc fountain pen.
It’s an iconic brand that for me represents longevity, craftsmanship and design elegance.
Which is why this image of an inflight ad posted by Ged is the equivalent of self-harming on a corporate scale.
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The giant turntable at York’s Railway Museum is being illuminated until January by Brief Encounter, an experiential light project, created by KMA. The snap shows a silhouette of my daughter being projected across the first of 11-displays in the exhibit.
Location based marketing has been mooted for sometime as the panacea of customer relationship marketing (CRM). Foursquare may just have cracked it and monetised its income stream in the process.
I checked into China Town when I nipped out of the office for lunch and discreetly in the corner of the screen was a link to nearby Hummus Bros. The link had a two-for-one offer for the local Mayor.
I get to visit a new place for lunch. Hummus Bros get a customer. Foursquare receives ad revenue. Everyone’s happy. If I visit regular and grab the Mayor’s title I’ll be rewarded with discount.
Drew Benvie has posted some ideas for how Foursquare could develop if its builds a critical mass of users and opens up its API.
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Travelodge has mounted an incredibly aggressive email campaign to its customers on the back of a compliant to the ASA against rival Premier Inn.
IKEA uses phototagging to promote the opening of a new store by word-of-mouth on Facebook.
If you’re interested in exploring business models for the future of media head to the North East of England.
That’s the call of Rick Waghorn who has written an excellent summary of the numerous projects in the region that are exploring aspects of content creation, delivery and financial models.
“If anyone wants to know where the future of the UK’s new media landscape will be forged and decided, it’ll be in the North-East of England. […] Whether by accident or design [it is a] very interesting place to be now media-wise,” says Waghorn.
Hyper local network
Trinity Mirror has created the Your Place network of 22 hyperlocal blogs fed by local bloggers and journalists the length and breadth of Northumberland. I’m an occasional contributor to my local site in the Rothbury area
Meanwhile Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday), an ambitious journalism student at the University of Sunderland, has launched SR2, a stylishly produced site dedicated to reporting about the SR2 postcode area of Sunderland. He is aiming to go ad funded to cover costs
Ad model
Trinity Mirror has recently opened up its Your Place project to an ad network called Addiply. It enables businesses to set up an ad campaign for a specific geographical audience for £5 per week.
Pay walls
The Northumberland Gazette is one of six weekly regionals in the Johnston Press stable that will disappear behind a paywall in a trial that starts on Monday. Will readers sign-up and pay online? I doubt it, but it will be interesting to watch.
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Here’s an innovative and interesting application of the web to stop shop lifting.
Home Bargains, a discount retailer, has a Crime Busters channel on its site where it publishes CCTV images of individuals that it would like to speak to in connection with suspected criminal activity.
“We are offering a reward of up to £500 per instance for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of anyone committing a criminal offence in our stores. If you have any information please contact us by filling in the form on the right, calling our confidential hotline number, 0151 547 4452, or speaking to the Store Manager in the relevant Home Bargains store.”
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The econsultancy Social Media and Online PR Report, sponsored by bigmouthmedia, published today, is the most exhaustive review of the industry undertaken in 2009. I received an early copy and contributed to the commentary.
The 70-page report lifts the lid on client-side and agency digital programmes. It tells a story of an industry experimenting with social media programmes (typically with no dedicated budget or a small budget) and grappling with the issues of engagement, monitoring and measurement.
The report is a must-read for anyone in the PR industry who aspires to remain in the PR industry. Here are some highlights:
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Here’s an application of Twitter that will generate hard cash for you. Amazon has made its affiliate programme Twitter-friendly.
Members of the Amazon Associates programme can share products with their network by clicking on a Twitter icon within the affiliate menu bar or stripe. This generates a tweetable message and unique URL.
When people click on the link and make a qualifying sale you’ll earn a referral fees via the affiliate programme – the entry level is typically 5 per cent of the value of a sale.
You can foresee less wise individuals spamming their networks with inappropriate messages. But abuse will quickly be stamped out by using block and unfollow functions.
Used with care in conjunction with other online marketing efforts Amazon’s initiative could be a neat way of monetising content.
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If you’re in London and near Trafalgar Square in the next week go and have a look at the graveyard of tree roots called Ghost Forest. Its been put there by artist Angela Palmer in a bid to raise the issue of deforestation of the world’s forests.
In the last 10 days I have had three different conversations with businesses that are using the social networks to gather commercial intelligence.
The very act of socialising an organisation means individuals share their motivations and information that can be tracked and used by third parties to competitive advantage. Be warned.
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Mums’ blogs and communities are one of the strongest social media verticals but Dads’ blogs are few and far between and good ones are extremely hard to find.
Parenting isn’t equitable between the sexes of course. But Dads are more involved than any other previous generation in the upbringing for their children and Dads as the primary career are increasingly common. At least that’s what our work for Tesco Baby tells us.
Yet this level of involvement isn’t spilling over into online conversations. Why is that? I polled my Twitter network on the topic last week and received a variety of answers.
Thanks to @markpinsent, @mynameisearl, @dannyWhatmough, @rhoughton, @andismit and @katiemoffat.
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Newspaper Club is building a service to help people make their own newspapers.
During the last week it has developed the Postcode Paper project in a bid to demonstrate its publishing prowess and put some of the data from the Government’s beta data.gov.uk data repository into people’s hands.
It’s a prototype of a service for people moving into a new area.
“In our exercise we imagined you might receive it after paying your council tax for the first time. It gathers information about your area [from data.gov.uk], such as local services, environmental information and crime statistics.”
How neat is that? Newspaper Club has seeded 50 copies of the Postcode Paper to a room full of civil servants in a hope that they will be excited by the possibilities and open up more government data to the public.
Newspaper Club is planning on launching early next year when it will offer a basic product of a 12–page, tabloid–size newspaper in black and white or colour in quantities from 5 to 5000.
“If you’re experienced with design software you’ll be able to upload a PDF to us and we’ll sort out printing and delivery. Or, if you need a bit more help, we’ll have a tool where you can upload your own text and pictures and we’ll help you lay it out on the page so it looks lovely. Then you can get it printed etc.”
(via @hrwaldram)
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In light of Trafigura’s much-reported injunction, is it harmful to put lawyers – rather than communicators – in charge of protecting an organisation’s reputation? This is the topic of December’s @loggerheads debate in Communicate Magazine between Richard O’Hagan, a solicitor at Brittons and me.
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