Marketing Communication

Charities are making social media work hard for them

Date:

07/10/2009

In tough economic times people and businesses are less able to give as freely as they may have once given, charity unfortunately stays at home!

As with any business in a recession charities need to be where their audience is or they run the risk of being left behind, and it’s clear some smaller charities are struggling to change lanes and adopt social media as a key part of their strategy. Some charities, however, have made the leap and have been reaping the rewards of new social opportunities.

Age Concern with partner Innocent Smooties developed ‘The Big Knit’. Started in 2003 the campaign has raised, to date, over £600k for older people in the colder winter months. The campaign now includes Flickr, YouTube and Blog channels which enable the people who’ve got behind the campaign to be part of the story. Clever widgets such as the ‘Hatometer’, which can be embedded into supporters blogs and websites, shows how many hats have been knitted so far. (more…)

Living through a revolution

Date:

28/07/2009

I read a piece recently by Clay Shirky, who in a blog post entitled ‘Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,’ reflected on the nature of revolutions. Periods of time when old ‘stuff’ was no longer relevant to us and new ‘stuff’ couldn’t come along fast enough to replace it. That feels like now doesn’t it?

The edges of our media space are expanding faster than our ability to make sense of them, of new technologies, of how people use them and of the shake out, that will mean some old media will fall by the wayside.

But this is an unravelling story seen from two very different perspectives. The user, swept along by the rush of the crowd to try new media, to make that media fit their lifestyle and the marketer, trying to position a brand where its’ target customer is. (more…)

100% pure filtered brand messages!

Date:

03/07/2009

One of the greatest challenges we face as marketers is to build and maintain strong brands.

Thankfully our tool chests are brimming with tools to help us carve out rich seams of knowledge and understanding relating to our audience that feeds our strategic thinking. That’s not all, add to this the torrent of real time feedback being generated across social media spaces about our products and some would say we’ve never had it so good. How could we fail to build strong brands? (more…)

Be Better Informed – June 2009

Date:

19/06/2009

Our monthly shout out about what’s buzzing in the Better studio.

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We’d like to say welcome to some nice new clients.
It’s a cliche but we’re people people, their drive and enthusiasm for what we’re going to be doing together is what we’re in this business for.

The Enterprise Team (Redcar & Cleveland, LEGI).
Better is delighted to announce that we’ll be working with The Enterprise Team to build a website that will provide valuable practical resources for enterprise businesses and schools in the Redcar & Cleveland area. We’re feeling the infectious drive within the team to support people with ambition, who want to step off on the path to owning their own business and we will be contributing time to developing marketing and PR resources people will find useful as well as building the system to house them. The Enterprise Team is looking beyond the two years it has remaining, and providing a repository for all their amassed knowledge will ensure people can benefit from it for years to come.

Yarm School
The region’s leading independent school has appointed Better to re-design and re-develop its website. Currently moving into development the new website will provide full content authoring across the Preparatory School, Raventhorpe, Senior School and Sixth Form. Functionality and improved call to actions across the website, as well as a powerful and simple CMS designed for all levels of user will support the administration of content. The project will be complete for the new school term. (more…)

Forget the tools, think about the conversation

Date:

28/05/2009

Phew, it’s getting crowded in here!…New ways of connecting people are coming hard and fast with a handful of cool APIs a day being launched to connect to big social media networks and mobile devices as well as pure bred micro blogging tools (Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, Jaiku, My Say, Hictu) and the new rash of ‘Gauge your happiness tools’ (Moodmill, I Rate My Day and Emotionr). In fact tools are being developed to help us manage all our social media tools more efficiently! The buzz is tangible, in fact it’s overpowering.

I was at a social media master class a couple of weeks ago that was hosted by Stowe Boyd, the guy who coined the term ‘Social Tools’. It was a warm up session for attendees to the outstanding Thinking Digital Conference (Book for 2010 now!). As the session went on it was clear the focus in the room, with the exception of JP Rangaswami (Confused of Calcutta) who spoke passionately about people engaging with people, was on the relative merits of tools and new social media platforms being developed.

This left me pondering, ‘Are we too focused on tools?’… (more…)

Is this the end of focus groups?

Date:

29/04/2009

I was talking yesterday with an account manager who during a discussion about market research said that social media metrics would never replace the value gained from facial expressions, body language and the tone of voice of people attending a live focus group.

I’ve planned a few focus group sessions in the past when I was part of the team that re-branded Frisp Crisps and I have to say I remember them as being interesting and generating some useful feedback, particularly that the crisps were considered as being quite ‘foody’ and filling, more than a snack. That fed into the decision that new ‘foody’ such as Buttered Jacket Potato & Mature Cheddar would fit with our customers’ perception of the crisp brand.

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University of Northumbria look for Better communication support

Date:

28/04/2009

UNSU Student Survey Campaign

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Sign posting people down 'The Funnel'

Date:

18/03/2009

I’ve seen lots of social media maps, some good some not so good.

The problem is they sit there in lofty isolation, a sea of mostly unfamiliar names and quirky identities.  They are a secret cypher known only to social media cool kids it seems. These maps are not connected to the real world (The one in which hard pressed marketing professionals are fighting hard for their budgets and their jobs) in any recognisable way. We’re missing an opportunity here and, if we’re honest, being a little bit condescending to boot. Another thing, social media buzz words are such a crock! Real people don’t talk like that!

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Goals for social media strategy

Date:

26/01/2009

So, we’re all fired up about social media.
We’ve gotten involved personally, learned a little, played a little and seen the benefits now we want to sell it to our company. It’s important to drop the buzz words, think strategically and get ready to answer questions from doubters and decision makers.

(more…)

Google argues that You Tube has more impact than TV

Date:

22/12/2008

The progress of digital technology has seen the traditional media of television change dramatically over the last ten years.  Increased convergence of services and technologies is changing the shape of the communications sector and in particular industry revenues.

The decline in advertising revenues coincides with greater availability and use of television-style content online and the growth of digital video recorders (DVRs) that allow users to skip adverts, putting even greater pressure on advertising revenues.  A report by OFCom found that up to 78% of DVR owners regularly used them to skip through adverts.

OFCom also found that online advertising continues to grow and Google have now announced that research undertaken by them has found that ads on its YouTube portal have a greater impact than those on television.

View the full article here avaible on Marketing Magazine website