Happy 6th Birthday Facebook!

According to its info page, yesterday, on 4 Feb , Facebook celebrated its 6th birthday.

In what can only be described as one of the most revolutionary social movements in history Facebook has changed the way people young and old communicate.

On its info page it states that its mission is "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected, the stats below." And if the stats below (kindly without knowing it provided by Social Networker Dec 2009 and Nielsen March 2009 - thanks guys) are any indication I have a hunch that Mr Zuckerberg and co might just be on their way. Just..

- Over350,000 monthly users worldwide
- 10 billion minutes spent on the site every day
- 1.4 million photos uploaded to Facebook every second (more than 2.5 billion per month)
- More than 700,000 local business have actve pages on Facebook
- Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
- More than 35 million users update their statuses every day
- More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news, stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums shared each week)
-More than 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users
- In Australia, social networkers spent an average of nearly three hours per month on Facebook, which is up two hours from the previous year (Nielsen Mar 2009)

So happy birthday big boy! You are such a good friend that I don't know what I'd do without you (I actually mean that, it's sad..)!

Pants off Subway Flashmob

Here's the latest installment from New York mob pranksters 'Improv everywhere'.

Just makes me wonder how much brands are missing out on product placement opportunities as well as branded opportunities as I have mentioned before.

Check it out!

Yaris brand Fail

The last 24 hours has been a Titanic disaster for the Toyota brand. Some say any publicity is good publicty but I say getting publically slammed (pun intended) in the media (The Age, Herald Sun, mX etc) cannot do much for one's branding.

In a Mumbrealla thread, Micha McDonald creator of the ad (below) defended the 'short film' saying it was not made for TV but I really don't think this is the point dude.

The fact is that the communication has Toyota branding on it. It has now been seen by over 20,000 people (as of today) on Youtube and hundreds of thousands more on news sites around the country / around the world. That's a lot of people pal. As Toyota is a family brand this is TOTALLY inappropriate. Social media is another platform just like a TV ad, magazines and billboards and there can be no case for going against brand values in any.

When it comes to social media execution, brands like with any other communictions channel have to abide by their branding style guide. This may have been a great execution for a nightclub but as a brand this turmoil is about as good for Toyota as "SRS airbags are to throw your head into."

Unfortunaetly for Micha, I think he would have been the one to be "on his back well before 11" this morning.

Are we living in a social media bubble?

This week we received the sad news that Australia's most well known purely social media strategy agency has shut its doors due to, well lets face it - a lack of business. I must admit I write this with an embarressing image of Carrie Bradshaw sitting on her bed by her laptap after just taking off her new Manolo Blahnicks. As I hear my own voice in my head however there is a very real question being asked for all of us social media believers...

"Are we living in a social media bubble?"

Are we, those in the industry, so consumed by our own tweeting, blogging and Facebooking that we think everyone else is and sees the same value of potential social media campaigns as we do? Yes we can all see the stats of Twitter, Facebook and blogger / wordpress increase by the month but then why can't the people who make the marketing budget decisions see the same value as we do? Are we deranged or just ahead of our time?

Not too disimilar to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda sitting around a table trying to solve the problems of their world (bar the physical conversation and Cosmopolian), an interesting discussion unravelled up on Mumbrella with some of those involved believing that social media is an in-house function with others taking the position of social media needing to be integrated into a fully serviced agency, which is ultimately what has happened with The Population morphing into their sister agency C4.

Ultimately I don't think the Australian market is ready for a stand alone social media agency just yet. We need Australian case studies of successful campaigns before companies in their masses will be completely comfortable with throwing tens of thousands of dollars at a campaign. And unfortunaetly for The Population, at this stage the Australian market hasn't produced enough solid results to qualify the need for a specialist agency.

So are we living in a social media bubble? Perhaps Carrie. But I think the mass take up and continuous use of of web 2.0 via Twitter, Facebook, blogging etc is reason enough to believe the bubble is a legitimate marketing tool. That makes us ahead of our time :)

As I I have discussed in an earlier post it will take time for a social media industry to develop. And for this reason, only time will illustate the need for special social media agencies.

Say Cheese - Flash Mob on Bondi Beach

Almost an extention of my last post, I liked this flash mob a lot better! I don't know why, maybe it was more authentic, had more character, more genuine personality? It just didn't seem to try as hard...

Looks like I might be alone in thinking the Bondi flash mob was a failure though. And when I take my marketing hat off and see that the video as of today has received over 400,000 hits on YouTube, it is clearly a vial success, make no mistake.

But I still can't look past the fact that the Bondi Flip flash mob was clearly created for marketing purposes and yet out of the 400,000 people who viewed the video I reckon the only people who have walked away from it with brand awareness are those of us who read blogs and other marketing press. So whilst it is a great viral success story, it is still in my opinion a terrible failure from a marketing perspective.

But enjoy this...Very funny!

Is the Flip Flash Mob a successful marketing execution?

Now I love a flash mob. From a social perspective they're underground, they're thought provoking and they challenge social norms. And from a marketing perspective they're a communication medium that, if done correctly, can send your message to millions and millions of engaged consumers for a cost that would make a TVC producer cringe.

But if a brand is going to pay for a flash mob execution to be created, surely it is with the intention of brand exposure? You know, the reason why marketers are marketers. ie to get their brand in front of the right audience in order to sell more products. If so (and please correct me if I'm wrong or out of line here) then I don't understand why 'Flip' (which is a handy instrument for mobile videography that I have had first hand experience with) wouldn't capitalise on branding in the viral video below (thanks Mumbrella).

Am I the only one who thinks this is a wasted opportunity? Considering the hope is that this video will generate millions of views like the flash mobs underneath, it doesnt make sense to me that there is no branded pre roll or post roll to the video nor anyone in the crowd subtly demonstrating the use of the flip?



Anyone else agree or disagree?

If you can't get enough of flash mobs like me then see below for some of the most impressive examples I've seen (branded and non branded). Enjoy!

The T-Mobile Dance at Liverpool Station (15 million views) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM

Trident Unwrapped, Beyonce, Piccadilly Circus (2 million views) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLj5zphusLw

Frozen in Grand Central (19 million views) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

Sound of Music Central Station Antwerp (2 million views) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k

Michael Jackson Tributes (4 million views) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVJVRywgmYM&feature=fvw

Kasabian's use of social media