Outdoor advertising at its best

Forrester adds Conversationalists to the Social Media Ladder

January 23, 2010 By Matthew Gain 1 Comment

Forrester has updated its social media ladder, part of its ongoing Technographics research series, to include the new group Conversationalists.

According to Forrester, commenting on North American only data:

They’re one-third of the online population. They’re 56% female. If you imagine that they’re just youngsters, you’re wrong: 70% are 30 or older. Their household incomes are about $2,100 above the average online consumer, but their level of engagement is sky-high.

Forrester released its latest APAC region report this month – focussed this time on India. The report does not include the conversationalist group, but I expect we will see this appearing in reports moving forward.

The Forrester Technographics report and particularly the social media ladder is an invaluable tool for providing an overview of the different ways people engage with content online and I use it a lot during client education, especially because it has such rich APAC region data.

If presenting this one thing to remember is that the groups are not mutually exclusive – i.e. a person can be a member of more than one group. I also find it handy to work my way up the ladder taking the audience on a journey of increasing engagement groups.

UPDATE

I came across the graph below after publishing this post. It is an interesting graph that shows movement between the different groups on the social media ladder over a period of three years. Again this is US only data:

There is also this handy tool, that will give you the split of groups by country and age group.

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Filed Under: Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: APAC, Conversationalists, forrester, Forrester Resarch, Social Media Ladder, Steve Noble, Technographics

What the Huffington Post taught me about online reputation management

January 20, 2010 By Matthew Gain Leave a Comment

The Huffington Post has published a story on Australian Work Habits, which surprise surprise finds that we are actually all quite hard working.

It is a good read, but what I am most chuffed about is the fact that the Huffington Post is linking to a post on this here blog.

No doubt the link is automatically generated, but it is exciting for my egotistic nature no less.

However, the more important thing to learn from this example is the importance of managing your business or personal reputation online. It is vital that reputation managers today are taking notice of what is being posted and shared online about their brands and products – no matter how small or insignificant the site may seem. You never quite know when one of the world’s biggest blogs could link to one of the world’s smallest blogs and bring a lot of traffic to something previously unknown.

If you or your PR people are not currently monitoring your brands online I suggest you do so immediately. If you get push back from your manager or finance people send them to this post – it may just change their mind.

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Filed Under: PR, Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: Blog, Blogging, Huffington Post, Moniotring, ONline moniotring, Online Monitoring, Reputation Management, Working Hours

Adidas launches highly produced video to announce Star Wars lineup

January 19, 2010 By Matthew Gain Leave a Comment

Adidas has produced a fantastic video to launch its new Star Wars line – due in stores in Jan.

The videos includes semi-subtle close ups of the shoes, Adidas ambassadors Beckham and Snoop and an awesome remix of the Imperial March. Check it out above.

Filed Under: Advertising/Marketing, Professional Posts Tagged With: Adidas, Beckham, Snoop, Star Wars

Holiday Inn genrates PR with clever stunt

January 19, 2010 By Matthew Gain 4 Comments

Holiday Inn in the UK is offering is offering a human bed warming service.

According to an article on Wired:

The Holiday Inn, which operates over 4,000 hotels worldwide, will offer a “human bed-warming service” for the next week to help keep guests stay warm inside, whilst it gets colder outside. This literally involves employees laying in your bed for five minutes before you get in.

I think it is Frank that does the PR for Holiday Inn, but it is not listed on its website. Let me know who did this if you know.

In my mind this is a clever stunt that no doubt has generated a tonne of coverage for them.

As with everything like this, it seems so simple when it has been done, but it is far from simple coming up with something like this.

A clever idea no doubt, but would you let a hotel emplyee warm your bed for you? Maybe it depends on how good looking they are?

Filed Under: PR, Professional Posts Tagged With: Blogsherpa, England, holiday inn, London, PR, PR Stunt, Scotland, UK, United Kingdom, Wales

Australia’s ABC ranks high in Twitter ranks

January 15, 2010 By Matthew Gain 4 Comments

Teqnolog has prepared a whole heap of charts tracking the number of Tweets individuals and organisations are making across the globe. Within the charts it was interesting to see the ABC right up there in the top Twitter organisations globally.

Of course numbers of Tweets don’t mean much and don’t suggest conversation or engagement, but interesting in my mind none the less.
I doubt very much that the ABC is the world’s most productive news organisation – i.e. only four other news organisations create more stories than the ABC. As such this suggests they are pushing heavy into this territory more so than other organisations.

But on the other hand this stat tells us nothing about the value of the messages being tweeted or the way the ABC is using the medium to engage with its audience.

The ABC has a handy list of its Twitter accounts, but reviewing the majority of these the follwing counts are much lower than the follower counts and most push rather than converse. There are of course exceptions and ones that do provide conversation, but these appear to be in the minority.

Personally I have not really engaged with the ABC Tweets (but that may be my failure?) unlike I have with othe rmedia people like Renai LeMay (ZDNet Australia) and Jack Schofield (Guardian) who mix their tweets that drive to stories with conversation, opinion and true engagement.

What do you think? Have you engaged with the ABC online? Is the organisation using it effectively?

HT to Trevor Young who directed me to the Teqnoblog post.

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Filed Under: Media, Professional Posts Tagged With: ABC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Teqnolog, Twitter

Why Zippers Have YKK On Them – masamikito's posterous

January 15, 2010 By Matthew Gain Leave a Comment

Today I found out why zippers have a YKK on them. The YKK stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha (say that five times fast). In 1934 Tadao Yoshida founded Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha (translated Yoshida Industries Limited). This company is now the worlds foremost zipper manufacturer, making about 90% of all zippers in over 206 facilities in 52 countries. In fact, they not only make the zippers, they also make the machines that make the zippers; no word on if they make the machines that make the parts that make up the machines that make the zippers.

Their largest factory in Georgia makes over 7 million zippers per day.

In any event, Mr. Yoshida’s company zipped to number one by practicing the “Cycle of Goodness”, as he called it. Namely, “No one prospers unless he renders benefit to others.” Using this principle, he endeavored to create the best zippers out there that would hold up over long periods of time in the end product. This in turn would benefit both the manufacturers who used his zippers and the end customer and because of these things benefit his company with higher repeat and referral sales, thus completing the “Cycle of Goodness” *zen moment*

So next time you’re zipping up, take a moment to remember Mr. Yoshida; also, if you’re going commando, careful with Captain Winky on the zip up. I can’t stress that enough.

Sources:

via todayifoundout.com

via masamikito.posterous.com

I have always wondered about this and have many times considered YKK one of my favourite brands for its ubiquity and utter dominance of its market.

Thanks Masami for this!

Posted via web from Matthew Gain’s posterous

Filed Under: Personal Posts, Uncategorized

Nudity and PR

January 12, 2010 By Matthew Gain 2 Comments

A nice little PR stunt here for no pants day – an initiative organised by a group called Improv Everywhere. The group claims its mission is to cause ‘scenes of chaos and joy in public places’ according to The Daily Mail.

I never fail to be amazed at the media’s desire to run a story that includes visuals of people nude/semi nude or even hinting at nude. Not that I think the journalists are idiots – you only have to look at what stories are most clicked to see that us readers love anything to do with sex, nudity etc.

For example check out what are the top five read stories on smh.com.au at the time of posting:

1. MP dumped after teenage sex scandal
2. Sex murder trial: MP’s niece ‘horrified’ by what she’s done
3. Woman drives home with body lodged in windscreen: police
4. Sydney’s night of the knife: one charged
5. Doctor struck off for prescribing drugs without seeing man

40% of the most read stories and the top two include the word sex.

Nothing earth shattering here obviously, but when planning your next PR stunt don’t forget the power of sex and the appeal of the nude form. Us media consumers, journalists and bloggers (hey it prompted this post) all love a little bit of titillation.

Filed Under: PR, Professional Posts Tagged With: Improv Everywhere, no pants day, PR, PR Stunt

Outdoor advertising at its best

January 9, 2010 By Matthew Gain 4 Comments

via viscomla.com

I came across this outdoor advertising picture on Wally Sabria (http://vicomla.com/blog) and thought it was pretty cool.

I met Wally whilst I was here in LA for a digital leads kick off meeting. A very cool guy he is the creative director for the Weber Shandwick LA office. I wish we had a creative director and design genius in the Sydney office.

Posted via web from Matthew Gain’s posterous

Filed Under: Advertising/Marketing, Professional Posts Tagged With: Creative Director, outdoor advertising, Wally Sabria, Weber Shandwick