H&M Flash Mob

I've written before about what makes a successful flash mob from a marketing perspective and what does not.

And the latest stunt from H&M Kids has definitely ticked the boxes.

Clear signage at the beginning of the clip and a billboard at the clip gives the vid great branding. And whilst a dancing flash mob is nothing new to us I reckon there may be some great cut through with those mothers (who buy their kids clothes)who may not be as savvy to a flash mob as you or I.

Check it (Thanks Mashable)

Yeh Yeh Im iOver-Connected -

Yeh I work in Social media. And yeh that requires a computer and yeh that means I need to keep on top of things that are constantly evolving. So yeh I am connected to an internet source for much of my waking hours.

Yeh friends, I am on my laptop at home in front of the TV watching The Footy Show. And yeh boys, I do check my iPhone every half an hour to see if I have any new emails. And yeh I also use my iPhone for great new applications that help me sleep, get a daily dose of information and waste spare time. Sure I check Facebook often and you're not wrong, I check tweet deck a shitload.

But boys and girls I am not alone as The Courier Mail reported this month.

- the average Australian internet user invests more than two working days on the net every week.

- internet use jumped nine per cent from last year, or an extra 90 minutes each week, and the average Australian internet user now spends 17.6 hours online every week

- Men spent more time online than women, by an average of 3.1 hours, and those aged between 16 and 29 were the biggest internet users at 22 hours per week.

If none of you punks think you have added to this trend then I suggest you better stop reading this on your iPhone and ponder. Yeh Yeh I'm iOver-Connected but I reckon you kids may be heading that way too :)

The New Dork

This is a great new video from The Pantless Knights - A great tribute to "The New Dorks" - The Zukerbergs, Larry Pages and Sergy Brins of today's world. The boys who are young enough to still have great grandparents and who have changed the landscape in which we communicate and find information.

Is anyone else getting flashbacks to Revenge of The Nerds!

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.