Close of Business for Adspace-Pioneers

Well I am off to India tomorrow, so I thought I would do a end of year post.

I do not think this blog would have been as strong as it has been without the knowledge I have gained from working at The Population. It was a massive year launching over 15 social media lead campaigns. I was doing the numbers the other night and that amounted to 80,000 people becoming fans of branded Facebook Pages and over 600,000 views of branded content on Youtube.

The highlight was The Contender Australia Facebook Page, which now I would officially deem as an ‘online community’. There are currently over 25,000 fans on the Page who speak about everything that is boxing with around 1,000 interactions on the Page a week.

Thanks to Tony and The Population for giving me the chance to work on these killer projects.

For anyone interested, here are my stats;

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Tips and benchmarks for Admins of Branded Facebook Pages

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I try to stick to these guides when I am going out with status updates;

1. Keep in a conversational tone
2. Ask a question
3. Keep it to two sentences max

Benchmarks of success

Comments on a status updates
For branded pages a percentage of 0.5% of your fans commenting back is the average anything that gets 1% or higher of your fans commenting back is an amazing result.

Unsubscribe rate
You are going to lose fans after every status update managing the level of unsubscribes is important. An unsubscribe rate of less than 7.5% is good.

Examples of good Australian Branded Pages
Supre/Mudo Media
The Contender Australia/The Population

Gif via Brown Cardigan

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Is Facebook making experiences more valuable?

The value of intangible experiences is being increased by the power of online social networking. Facebook allows you to now communicate and thus amplify your social experiences through the uploading of photos of the experience and status updates about those experiences.


Look at the impact it is having on the experience of attending a Music Festival. It is now heightened by talking about it with friends before hand and alerting your network through updates, it is then valued again when you post photos up of the event afterwards.

Personally, I know that I am a sucker to the experience economy. I am not to interested in possessions (I have lived in Sydney for 15 months and my only piece of furniture is a bed side table which is a milk crate). I do not know if this is a time in my life and my priorities will shift to surrounding myself with nice items in the future or if it is a symptom of my generation where we no longer want expensive items but crave new experiences?

What I do know, is that there is a huge opportunity for experience based brands to increase the value of their offering through helping their customers communicate that experience to their friends. At the end of the day it is how we are viewed and valued by our friends and our desired friends that matters to us most.

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20/80 split because paid and earned media are best friends!

There are some great social media campaigns flying under the radar at the moment. There one common theme I can see amongst them is that they are not getting any support from paid media.

Paid media is earned media's best friend, They work really well together. I think if you are looking to carve up a digital budget you should put at least 20% aside for paid media to help support the idea/content, this will then drive earned media results.

Where the idea lives = Advertising Model
Facebook Page = Facebook Advertising
Youtube Video = StumpleUpon, Facebook Advertising or Youtube ‘Supported Ad Model’ (I haven’t used this yet, has anyone had any results with this?)
Twitter = No efficient advertising model

Image via Brown Cardigan bros

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Top 50 Youtube LOLs of 2009

Looking at the number of RTs and how much I like the clip, this is the Top 50 Youtube Gold clips of 2009. Congratulations to Ask Propecia, which even my mum and dad are fans of.

1. Ask Propecia the crack ho


2. Bangs will take you to da movies via his green screen


3. Boy gets bacon taken away so he moves out of home


4. Best Keyboard Cat in a long time


5. Every single Kramer entrance, in chronological order


6. Pinata accidents montage
7. Urinate in your golf club
8. The 100 greatest quotes from The Wire
9. Dating video goes really wrong
10. The best commercial ever! Jones' Big Ass Truck Rental
11. Amazing wheelbarrow race
12. It's a cat. With a box.
13. Bill Dance Fishin Blooper No.3
14. Pole dance ruins wedding
15. No need to wipe your bum anymore!
16. Morbidly obese woman + mechanical bull = WIN
17. Drugs to do on a first date
18. The @bag_raiders do the best cover ever of Bangs 'Take U to Da Movies'
19. Top 60 ghetto names
20. The worlds best dancer evah!
21. Old man breaks it down
22. Internet for kidz!
23. A really weird trip to the doctor
24. Best 80s fight scene
25. Massive gymnastic fail, includes good groin shot
26. Giant Seagull attack on Nine News
27. Barrier jump FAIL
28. Top Ten Seinfeld moments
29. We are douchebags
30. Unnecessary censoring of Sesame Street!
31. Hands up who has been shagged by a rare parrot?
32. Arthur the weather man memefied with Spiderman!
33. 100 greatest hits of Youtube in 4mins!
34. Courtship vs Dating- Christian Bad Acting
35. We need weather men like this in Australia
36. Horse kicks moron in the face
37. The perfect valentines gift for that special girl in your life
38. Worst acting of all time! There going to eat me! via Troll 2
39. An introduction: To Making Out
40. Top 10 Best Talk Show fights
41. Old man taking down the robber
42. Little dancing Ranga vs. MJ
43. Emplastro, Master Videobomber!
44. Auto-tune cats song awesomeness
45. The Pug head tilt
46. Best Death Scene Ever
47. The 1991 AFL Grand Final Halftime Show
48. 1987 Dating videos found
49. 80s Swazye on the philosophy of dancin

And my very first piece of Youtube Gold!
50. 'The best fight scene EVER!'


Background
The Youtube Golden Hour
Every Friday at 4pm on Twitter I post all the best clips of that week in a segment I like to call Youtube Gold. It has now clocked over the 3 month mark so I thought it would be a good idea to create the best of YTGold in the form of the ‘Top 50 Video Lols of 2009’. If you ever find any funny videos please pass em on!

McCann's Birthday
At the moment my good mates Mark Pollard and Age Conte are cooking up a great present for Advertising Agency McCann’s 50tth. They are hosting an internet party where every hour, staff are putting out new content that is related to the number 50th.They are giving punters the chance to get involved by giving people $50 if they create something constructive in the honour of 50.

Facebook Tattoo Calendar

Just in case you forgot you can still purchase from me the amazing Christmas present of the 2010 Facebook Tattoo Calendar, only $20! All proceeds will be going to Bowel Cancer Research. Which is also where the $50 from McCann’s will be going.

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Social Media is not all about long term relationships

I used to think that Social Media Marketing was all about the long term relationships, the campaign model was the devil's work!

How I was wrong.

Luke Slattery founder of Movember flipped this whole idea of long term relationship on its head. Movember only speak to people 3 months a year (October to December). They realised that people have got a lot of other charities to support and that they do not want to be taking everyone’s time up.

I tend to agree, especially if you are a part of another active social platform. If you have a presence on Facebook or Twitter then people are not going to be shocked when you stop talking, they understand why you have stopped. It is not going to affect them either because they have a number of other people who are part of their newsfeed. However if you had created a branded destination community and you abandon it, then that is another story.

We are currently looking after The Contender Australia Facebook Page, it is going great guns and has clocked over 22,000 fans in less than 8 weeks (case study in the works). We plan on stopping communication a few weeks after the conclusion of the show. We will then pick up the conversation again in 12 months time when the second season comes online.

Picture thanks to the best site on the Internet Brown Cardigan

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Case Study: Seek Volunteering Unplugged

Problem: Seek had aligned with Volunteer Australia to provide the back engine to help volunteers connect with NFP jobs required Seek Volunteer. There has long been a myth that volunteering is what old grannies did in Op Shops. Seek wanted to help dispel this myth.

We (Naked Communications + The Population) were set the task of getting more people to use the Seek site to look for Volunteering roles.

Strategy: Create a site that shared the stories of people who had volunteered, focusing on the stories of influential Australian bloggers.

Insight: People who read blogs were probably some of the most advanced online users. They would most likely perform a number of tasks online (banking, looking for jobs, buying products). These would be the type of users who would use Seek Volunteer to find a volunteer job.

Execution: We looked to get ten of the most influential Australian bloggers to go and volunteer at an organization of their choice. Seek Volunteer would then donate $500 to that organisation on behalf of the blogger.

We isolated a list of 20 bloggers who we believed were influential and were relevant to talk about volunteering. We used the Top 100 Australian Bloggers as a starting point. We then went out with an email to these ten.

We created a site which would allowed people to read all the stories in one place as well as share their own story.

The site was supported with Banners on SEEK homepage, SEEK Volunteer homepage, Ninemsn and the Nuffnang blogging network.

Volunteering Unplugged was launched on May 11th 2009 at the start of National Volunteer Week. With the launch we did another outreach to the broader community and got the number 1 subscribed Australian Youtuber Natalie Tran (Community Channel) to talk about the site and industry support from NFP websites Third Sector and Go Volunteer and marketing site Mumbrella.

Result
We ended up with a site which had 57 volunteering stories, of the people that visited the site 25% of them checked out the Seek Volunteering website afterwards. Seek Volunteer were really happy with the project and are looking to extend on it in 2010.

Learnings
Blogger Outreach is really really tough
We ended up getting ten bloggers but we had to look beyond the original list of 20 and it was really tough. I think we underestimated how busy most bloggers were and giving up a whole day to volunteer at an organization was a massive commitment. In my experience there is probably only a handful of Australian bloggers (20 people?) who make enough money not to have to work full time.

This required us to change tact, what we found out was that most bloggers had volunteered in the past so instead of getting them to volunteer again we got them to share their previous stories.

Man Week
Olivia Whitty who worked on the Seek volunteer project went onto run a similar project, Man Week for Outreach. Man Week worked on the same principle of getting male bloggers to share stories about what it means to be a man. They were lucky enough to get the support of two influential bloggers in Mark Pollard and Gavin Heaton who went over and above and shared amazing stories that lead to a number of other people sharing stories.

Blogging in general
Blogging in Australia is still small. When you look at the Top 100 Australian Bloggers the content quality and readership drop dramatically once you go below the Top 45. In America you could run a whole campaign on Blogger Outreach, in Australia that is just not possible.

Blogger Outreach will only work here if you are targeting a global audience (Dosh Wallets) or you are also targeting writers at major online content and news portals.

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The science of a great Youtube video - The Station and OralB

Making content for Youtube is a science and when you understand the formula it becomes quite easy to replicate.

Recently a number of the top Youtubers created a new channel together, The Station. They used all the tricks that had gotten them so far (boobs in the thumbnails, fast editing, weblebrity appearances, and annotations asking for favouriting and rating).

In my opinion, The script and filming is average but that just helps to confirm that with the right formula you can turn any dog into a hero. The channel is now the 15th most subscribed of all time! The show is also acting as a great tactic to get great exposure to the actor’s personal Youtube channels.


OralB have done a great job at creating what I see as the first ad that has been specifically made for Youtube. It uses a lot of the editing tricks that many of the top Youtubers employ.

Edit: Andy brought to my attention that the brand is not OralB but OraBrush

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List of Music Festivals using Social Media well

We are well and truly into the Music Festival season. Promoters have always been great at using social media so I thought I would take a look at some of the better examples of music festivals using social media.

1. Stereosonic
Their twitter account is run by the general manager of the festival which gives the inside scoop on the happenings of the festival. This is also used to gauge feedback of certain ideas.

They have created a competition on Facebook, where punters have to take photos of the Stereosonic advertising, they then go in the draw to win tickets. Here is an example of a fan going over and above to get the ticket (action kicks off at 30secs)


2. Defqon.1 Maximum Exposure
One of the best competitions this year was run through dance site Inthemix
Defqon the competition asked people to get the Defqon logo out to the most people. The prize was to win a trip to Holland for music festival Defqon.1


Check out some of the other great efforts


3. Outside Lands (USA)
Looking abroad, this is a great example of what could is possible. Attedees at Outside Lands could use kiosks so you could upload your own photos and videos of the shows Then share them online with friends on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. They also streamed all the festival live on Youtube. Read the full case study on InsideFacebook.


4. Lollapoolza (USA)
An amazing case study on measuring the effectiveness of Social Media for ticket sales to Lollapoolza. Clever use of tracking tags and google analytics, read here.

5. Seeding a Green Festival (UK)
A case study from the London Green Festival, which gave the chance for a band to open the festival. Really nice simple case study to read.

6. One Movement Festival
If you didn't live in Perth there was a good chance you may have missed out on what was happening at the One Movement festival/conference. However Andrew McMillen was able to inform everyone with what they missed out with live blogging/twittering/facebook coverage of the festival.

7. BDO and Splendour Forums
FasterLouder are now looking after the forums for Splendour in the Grass, Laneway Festival, and Big Day Out. If you are interested in music and digital media Neil Ackland's (founder of Sound Alliance) blog is a must read

BONUS
Although not a music festival, I thought I would add this one. The Facebook Admins have been taking photos of bikes around Syndey and if your bike was featured you would win tickets to the festival, nice idea. The festival kicking off on Wednesday night, go here for more info and tickets!


I am looking to build this list out. Let me know what festival has done something different in the social space and I will add them to the list.

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How to get an internship! Got any tips?

With all this chatter about graduates getting jobs at the moment. I thought I would throw my two cents in about how to land an internship.

1. Know where you want to go
I think the first thing to do is suss out the situation and find out who is doing kick arse work in the area you are interested in. Make a list and go for the top of the pile.

2. Volunteering is not enough
Having an intern is a lot hassle for employees these days. You have to always find them small tasks to do. So instead of just asking for an internship find something that you can do for the company that can add value. Social Media offers a great opportunity for Gen Y looking to get an internship. A number of marketers don’t get it and want someone young to explain it for them. If I was looking for an internship at the moment in a marketing organisation, I would tell them that I would like to compile a report for them, on what people are saying about their brand online and what are competitor brands doing in social media?

3. Something different

Have a talking point. My next door neighbour, Josh Clement sent me this great video he created to help him find an internship. Awesome.

4. Contacts
When I was at University, my mum knew a lot of people in advertising so she kept on trying to introduce me to people working in Advertising. It shitted me to tears, I wanted to make it on my own. That was until she helped me get my first break with Sputnik. Do not be stubborn like I was, take all the help you can get. Most people in this world will try to help you out and will enjoy seeing someone succeed.

What other tips do you have for graduates looking for jobs/internships?

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The Perfect Gift for a Man

So if you are like me and struggle with buying Christmas and birthday presents, do not stress I have your brother and dad sorted this Christmas!

Back in June, a number of bloggers (including myself) shared some really personal stories about what it means to be a man for the Inspire Foundation's Man Week. There were a number of amazing heart felt stories, at the time it felt like something really big.

The super smart Gavin Heaton and Mark Pollard took the idea to the next level, they helped to get the story beyond the blogosphere bubble by creating a book ‘The Perfect Gift for a Man’ which was a collection of stories about being a man. Below is Gavin helping to get the story out on KAK.


If you would like to purchase a hard copy of the book you can buy it from Blurb.com or you can buy the e-Book from The Perfect Gift for a Man website. The profits will all go to The Inspire Foundation, so dig deep!

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Case Study: Yves Klein Blue Twitter Application

Problem
Yves Klein Blue are an indie/rock band who in June were about to release a new album Ragged and Ecstatic. With the release of the new album it was hoped that it would become a Top 40 selling album.

Strategy
To captalise on the growing success YKB were having with Twitter we decided to leverage one of the recent innovations through Twitter which was a Twitter application which allowed someone to download an mp3 when they tweeted a unique code for, this had been used by TRVS-DJAM weeks earlier.

We proposed that Yves Klein Blue would allow people to download one of their songs and go in the running for VIP tickets to Splendour in the Grass if they tweeted a specific code.

Implementation
We used Culture Jam who built the original TRVS-DJAM application to build the site/app for us. For launch, we went out to Yves Klein Blue existing social network and communicated the offer.

TRV$DJAM Twitter Promotion Screencast from Culture Jam on Vimeo.

We then went out to a number of influential music tweeters/bloggers and made them aware of the offer.

Results
We were hoping for 1,200 downloads of the song (estimated that of their current social network that 15% would tweet the offer and they would influence one person in their twitter following to do the same).

We ended up falling significantly short of this target with only 432 downloads of the track.

The silver lining was that we were able to double the size of YKB Twitter following in two weeks, they went from followers 487 to 1,017 in three weeks. It took 5 months to get their first 487 followers.

Learnings
I really think that you learn more from the campaigns that do not match your expectations than the ones that do.

Size of Twitter in Australia
Twitter is really really small in Australia. Twitter has 250,000 active Australian users. That is nothing! That is 3.5% of the size of Facebook. When you are trying to find a niche of fans, it probably would have been better to not make it even harder for ourselves by launching on a niche platform.

Locking in influentials
Locking in relevant influential Tweeters (music+following) prior to
launch is essential

Easier site navigation
We got 1,700 visitors to the site and only 432 followers. The drop between visitors and downloaders indicates that the bulk of users did not have twitter accounts or couldn’t be bothered to follow the steps

Mix of earned and paid media
We can’t rely on publicity to drive traffic to an application, since doing this venture with YKB we realized that it requires a mix of earned and paid media for an idea to kick off in the social media environment.

Comparing the Australian and US audiences
Be cautious when making comparisons between the US and Australia. Travis Barker and DJ-AM at the time had a substantial following, YKB did not.  

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A digital music mystery: Australian Idol Fan to Follower anomaly, Do you know the answer?

What is the difference between a Facebook Fan and a Twitter follower?

I have been doing a bit of research into Australian music artists and their number of fans online. My hypothesis was the more album you sold, the more fans you would have on Myspace, Twitter and Facebook.

My white paper that I will release soon, finds benchmarks for ARIA charting artist. I have found the average number of Facebook fans, Myspace friends and Twitter followers of an artist should increase depending on what level of sales they got to on the ARIA chart (Gold, Platinium or 2x Platinium).

But I noticed one really interesting pattern, ex-Australian Idol contestants index really low on Facebook Fans but then really high on Twitter Followers?
For instance, a Gold (35,000+ album/single sales) selling artist the average number of Facebook Fans is 14,000 (e.g Karnivool, Bliss N Eso and Pnau all have between 10-15k for fans). However Australian Idol contestants Wes Carr and Ricki-Lee have a very low number of fans (2000 and 1,700 fans respectively). However when you look at Twitter followers the average is 1,300 followers but Wes and Ricki-Lee have triple that number with 3900 and 3800 respectively?!?!

So why is it that Australian Idol contestants index so low on Facebook fans yet so high on Twitter followers?

I have got no idea, I would be really keen to hear your theory on why this phenomena is occurring. Free Guy Sebastian album for the person who comes up with the right answer!

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Case Study: My Year Without Sex Social Media Campaign

Problemo: My Year Without Sex was a new Australian film, which was hard to market as it didn’t fit into one specific category. The trailer was not going to be enough to get people to watch it. Working on a small budget we needed to get people to talk about the film.


Strategy: Use word of mouth to help fuel discussion around the movie

Implementation:

Identifying Key Environments
We identified the target market as mothers. Using Google Ad Planner and a number of other tools we looked for the environments where mothers were most vocal online and three environments stood out; Facebook, Mothers Forums and Mother Blogs.

Part 1: Mothers Forums
We went out to a number of the major mothers forums and offered the Moderators of the sites free double passes to see the film. Forums host some of the liveliest discussions online.

Part 2: Blogs
We identified a number of influential female blogs that we thought would enjoy the film. These bloggers were found using the Top 100 Australian Women Bloggers list. From this list we got a number of high profile bloggers to go and see the movie. We also used the NuffNang to outreach to a further 20 bloggers.

Part 3: Facebook
There was an opportunity to get a number of people along to a pre screening for the film in each major cities. We used Facebook Advertising and a Facebook Event to set up an exclusive Facebook Pre Screening for 500 people. We also ran a Facebook Page which had further information about the movie.

Part 4: Youtube - Creating a piece of passable content
We decided to create a piece of content around the film which we believed could have mass appeal online. We created the ‘5 Things that get in the way of Sex’ video. We were able to get this video to the front page of Digg and then Youtube Honour Board with 25,000 views in one week. This ended up being the feature of a blog post in Sydney Morning Herald Ask Sam Blog.


Result:
In its opening week MYWS took $177,522 and has currently grossed $1,127,838 in box office sales.

Learnings:
Facebook Page
It is really hard for someone to become a fan of a product that they have no knowledge about. We did not see growth in the Page until after the release date which usually does not work with the timings/budgeting of films.

Facebook Advertising
This campaign ran from early April to May this year, this was before the upgrade to the Facebook advertising model. We were only able to manage to get 900 people into the Page for the movie, when we promoted Cedar Boys another Australian film we were able to get 2,000 easily into the Page. So this new upgrade has definitely made a difference.

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The 'R' in Social Media Revolution stands for 'Rubbish'

Next week this blog will turn 3 years old, there has been a change in direction over the past 12 months. Last year I used to speak about social media as a revolution that would change the way businesses would approach marketing! WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH!

After working in an agency for a year, I realised that social media will actually be an evolution of the current digital/advertising model. I find there is still to many of these revolutionary spruikers in the blogosphere who are referencing one off social media examples as proof of the revolution! I think what is needed is more people sharing stories about first hand experience on how they overcame barriers (money/legal/administration) and how they integrated social media into their current digital/advertising model.

Revolutionary Social Media spruikers are good for one thing, they help to get people who know nothing about social media excited about the possibility of the technology. However, once this excitement dies down, there needs to be information on what people can actually do.

I guess what I am trying to say is, I am thinking of scraping the name Adspace-Pioneers.blogspot.com and going with the name examples_of_social_media_being_used_in_digital_campaigns_and_other_shit.blogspot.com

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Facebook Page Growth: 30-40% attributed to earned media

Facebook is really helping to close the gap between advertising and social media. It now gives brands the opportunity to incorporate and track both paid and earned media in the one place.

Doing some analysis over three Pages (The Contender Australia, Grinspoon, Vanessa Amorosi) I am currently working on I worked out that for every three people that join a Page through paid media, they will indirectly influence two friends within their network to join the Page via the suggestion box/highlight or news feeds of their friends pages.


Lode cash in on the indirect earned media 'Suggestions' spot

In my opinion Facebook is the only social platform that has an advertising model that is worth investing in. We are seeing some of the smart agencies in Australia pick up on this and really launch some big exciting campaigns through the platform Telstra Digital Mums (DDB), The Skinny Cow (Publicis Digital), 5 Seeds (Holler), and Lynx (SOAP).

Methodology: Since the upgrade to Facebook Ads in June 2009, they now give you action rates which is how many people become a fan directly from the ad. So subtracting this action rate number from your Page growth gives you the viral growth rate, I then made that number into a percentage (Grinspoon - 34%, Vanessa Amorosi - 39% and The Contender - 40%). I would love it if anyone else would like to share their stats

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Case Study: Victoria's Secret Facebook Page and Monash Uni's Electronic Marketing Course

Here is a great case study of Victoria's Secret Pink Social Marketing/Facebook Campaign

The video was created by students Mark and Natalie as part of the Electronic Marketing course which lecturer/legend Peter Wagstaff is teaching at Monash University.

Fellow student/blogger Rick Clarke and James Moran are also doing the subject so I asked them for a few words on the course.

'Instead of writing an essay, one of our tasks was to create a short instructional video, and share it with the class (and the world!) via YouTube. We made our video on the evolution of the web from Web 1.0 through to Web 2.0, and speculated what Web 3.0 might be like.'


In related news, Lode a graduate recruiting company have a great little Facebook promotion going on at the moment. They are giving graduates the chance to score one of three summer internships at Lonely Planet, Thiess or PWC. All you have to do is explain in 100 words or less, why you think you are the best candidate for the job.

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Speaking in October

I am pretty sure Sydney is getting sick of hearing me speak however I have a few more speaking engagements coming up in October.

1. Networx Marketers – Online Marketing event on Tuesday 20th October
I will be on a panel with Nic Hodges and Ben Phillips talking about the latest trends in online communication, developing digital strategies and blogger outreach.

Key blogs posts on this topic;
Blogger Outreach - Dosh Wallets Case Study
Facebook Pages vs. Groups
Six Practical Tips to getting your video onto Youtube Honour Board


2. AIMIA event ‘Getting inside Gen Y’ on Thursday October 22nd
I will be talking about the trends that are occurring online for Gen Y also on the panel will be Jye Smith.

Key blogs posts on this topic;
Marketing to Melbourne Hipsters – Nelson Beer Case Study
I party farkin hard wif me mates and I got photos to prove it
7 traits of cool kids online

3. Australian Marketing Institute Annual Conference on Thursday October 29th
I will be speaking about the key leanings marketers can take away from how the music industry has evolved with social media.

Key blogs posts on this topic;
Grinspoon Case Study
15 Australia Musicians using social media
5 practical learnings from working in social media

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Top 10 Australian Viral Videos and The Mumbo Report

I featured on the Mumbo Report talking about memes and virals, so I thought it would be fitting to do a '10 to 1 Australia's Best Viral Videos.'

10. Teenage Affluenza - World Vision


9. Where the bloody hell are you? - Dan Ilic


8. Beached Whale- Handsomity Institute


7. True History of Australian Football - Aktifmag


6. Get into any nightclub - Sprite Truth Hunters


5. Corey Delaney, Party Liason - ACA and Crikey Media


4. ChkChkBoom - Nine News


3. Free Hugs - Sick Puppies


2. Trent from Punchie - Trent


1. The Big Ad - Carlton Draught

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Case Study: Dosh Wallets – Blogger Outreach

Problemo: Dosh Wallets were releasing their second range of wallets but no one knew about it. Online had worked great in the past to build awareness.

Strategy: Get the top male fashion and design sites to write about the new product.

Implementation:
Step 1: Identifying Bloggers
We used Google Blog Search to identify bloggers who had already talked about Modern Designed Wallets (Dosh & competitors). We then used Technorati to find bloggers who were writing on the topic of design and male fashion.

We took this list of thirty potential bloggers and ranked them in terms of importance using Alexa and Technorati. This helped us to clarify who we would offer product to for a review and who we would just inform about the launch.

Step 2: Creating the outreach
We tried to keep the first email to one paragraph. More than a paragraph and the respondent would lose interest. Once we received a response we told them about the product. We also set up an Easter Egg/30% Discount for all the bloggers to tell their readers about. It was hidden in the ‘O’ of Dosh on the website (still live).

Result:
Sales: For the eight weeks that we were involved with the blogger outreach we were able to double the number of online sales of the product.

Traffic: We brought in over 4,000 interested punters from 30+ external linking sites. Including the top International style blogs of Kanye West, Yanko Design, Like Cool and Australian blogs Lost at E Minor and Gizmodo.

SEO: We were also able to get their site to number one in the search results from the strength of all the in-links that we provided through these sites.

Learnings:
Just go for the big boys
When we hit the big blogs we noticed that about four or five other blogs would follow suit and write about the wallets. Which suggests you only need to target the ones at the top to have the biggest effect.

Straight to the point
Our initial email started out with three paragraphs of copy we ended up writing just one paragraph. You also need a direct call to action in the subject header.

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The Facebook Tattoo story

February - Mardi Gras
In 2050, I will sit my grandchildren down and I will tell them the following story of how I had the chance to join Corey Delaney and ChkChkBoom girl in the ranks of Australia’s biggest online idiots… and I blew it!

So this whole idea started with Zoe Scaman. She is a colleague who works as a Digital Strategist for The Population but she is also the only one with Media Trading experience in our team.

Unfortunately, she is now tasked with the labourious job of trafficking all the media we book - one of the most boring tasks going around. Being the nice co-worker I am, I have reveled in her disdain for this task and poked fun at her at every chance I have got.

So when Cate came back from a client meeting and re-told the story of how she told the client that ‘Julian loves Facebook so much that he has a tattoo of it on his bum.’ This was Zoe time to strike ‘That is a great idea, Can we start a Facebook Page to get 500 fans and then will you get one?’

My fateful words ‘Yeah, whatever and then when it gets to a 1,000 I will get a tattoo on my face.’

With those words she was off creating a Facebook Page. Her media skills would come back to haunt me, as she got in touch with Carat, MediaCom, Allure Media, Fairfax Media, Media Smart, Tongue, Ninemsn, Facebook Sales Team (Australia and International) Mumbrella, B&T and pleaded that they send it around as a group email to their workforces of around 2,000+ people. It was pretty much sealed on Thursday when Mumbrella wrote a post on it.

I could tell the 500 fans were like a pack of starving wolves they wanted to see blood/ink so seeing as though I am not completely immune to the idiot strain, I decided to get a 2 month semi permanent tattoo.

Thanks to the awesome photographer/art directing combo of Jye Smith and Michelle Carter, I now have a full calendar worth of photos.
May - Mothers Day

It will be the perfect Christmas present for your Facebook addicted friends. I will write a personalised message in every calendar so that your friend will never look at Facebook the same way again. It will probably cost around $20 and I will donate all the profits to Bowel Cancer Research. More details and photos to come.

With the request for photos of the tattoo, I thought I would give people more than they can handle. I decided to make a calendar to help Facebook Addicts.

So the moral of this story don’t piss off english people or you may get stuck with a Facebook tattoo on your bum for the whole of summer.

If you are disappointed or angry and wish to protest simply unfan the Page.

January - Summer

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Social Media Advertising - SM integration.

I really like this new campaign from Soap for the Lynx Superfresh range – Party across the Internet. I think it shows the evolution of where social media can sit within digital advertising.

Soap have created an amazing interactive banners on the QuicksilverPro, Ralph Magazine, Myspace and Heavy sites which then all link through to the Lynx Facebook Page.

They have Facebook acting as a net to catch all the fans of the banners. Facebook currently offers the best direct marketing recruitment vehicle online.

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Is the Digital Strategist/Producer team, the new Art Director/Copywriter?

In the future, I could quite easily see myself being set up in a Digital Strategist/Producer team similar to the dynamic of an Art Director/Copywriter team of a traditional Ad Agency.

Media is the creative in so many circumstances in Digital and without a gun Producer being able to work out the feasibility of your ideas, you’re really nothing.

I was lucky enough to be paired up with Cate Mathers for a number of projects over the last six months. She was in a producers role at The Population even know she was clearly more of a strategist. I found as a team we were able to produce some great strategies that we were then able to translate into ideas and turn around and implement.

Unfortunately, Cate is onto bigger and better things moving over to OMD as a Integrations Strategist. However, I am looking forward to the future of the Strategist/Producer team. It comes as no surprise that there is currently a high demand in Sydney for good digital producers.

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Case Study: Running a branded Facebook Page on small to no budget (Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a guest blog post from Kevin Lippy who has successfully run a branded Facebook Page aimed at Backpackers travelling through Australia. He has used the great analogy of the Big Lebowski to show the lesson learnt from this.

5. “I don't roll on Shabbos!” – Walter Sobchak
Actually, with your company’s name at stake and by giving our fans free reign to post links, pictures and videos on our wall, you kind of have to roll (or at least check on it) always. Yes even Saturdays. Also, we knew that by opening ourselves up in this way, meant it was inevitable that other third parties would use the page to promote themselves. Like ‘El Duderino’ himself, we have taken the pacifist approach, and have decided to do absolutely nothing about this (so far), because:
a. While their content hasn’t been cool, so far it has been harmless
b. They have never been our direct competitors
c. It would be hypocritical - as we had seeded info on other pages
And...

6. “This is what happens….” – Walter Sobchak.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCcKBcZzGdA - (censorship on purpose)

7. “Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon, with nail polish. Those…. amateurs!” – Walter Sobchak
In order to meet our objectives we had to generate interest. We went about this by opening up to other people in the industry by grouping together a prize that included 15 Nights accommodation, a 2000km bus pass, a Skydive and a Surf Camp. Being inclusive, also made our Page sexier as all of a sudden we had hip content to post like skydives, surf safaris and nightclubs. To enter we couldn’t have made it simpler. All someone had to do was:
1. Become our fan
2. Write on our wall “The best thing about backpacking Oz is…”

We promoted the Page in 3 main ways:
1. A Launch party - we co-hosted a night at a Backpacker Bar and had a door prize draw for anyone who became a fan on the night.
2. We created some signage and asked Hostel managers to promote it.
3. We created in Facebook ads. These are the shizzle! One of my core objectives is to get to my customers before they have even left their country! Please tell me another way I could do this for the price I have with Facebook ads?

8. “Where’s the F***ing money Lebowski?” – The Dude
Laugh if you will… but I believe that I have evidence that this campaign has been monetized in some ways.

Exhibit A:

This was a question, posted on a spin off ‘group’ created by one of our fans, with the purpose of asking other fans whether they were going to be staying at one of our Hostels this New Years Eve. From this I see two good news stories:
1. A random fan created a Facebook “group”, unprompted by us, positively talking about our brand.
2. By the time I had even seen this, Carolyn’s question had been answered by another fan, the situation had been resolved, and as a consequence she was able to book with us (= revenue $). This had all occurred on the Group’s wall!

My all time favourite part of Facebook pages is “Interactions.”
I find it strangely exciting to know that exactly 39% of my Fans are Females between the ages 18-24. More importantly, I can monitor the amount of page views, fans, user-generated content uploaded, fan interactions and even how many photos have been looked at.

We launched www.facebook.com/backpackingmate just over 3 weeks ago (oh yeah... make sure you get a vanity URL… you just need 100 fans). After all is said and done we are a bed… not a band, and are not something that many people already have an existing emotional connection to. I am stoked with the amount of fans we have, and even more with how they have interacted with the page. I am still deciding whether it is something that should be evaluated within the context of a brief campaign, or something that will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

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Case Study: Running a branded Facebook Page on small to no budget (Part 1)

This is a guest blog post from Kevin Lippy who has successfully ran a branded Facebook Page (Backpacking Mate) aimed at backpackers travelling through Australia. He has used the great analogy of The Big Lebowski to describe the lessons learnt.


“Smokey, this is not 'Nam…. There are rules” – Walter Sobchak

With a budget of "as close to zero as possible" and with the experience in running a Facebook campaign to match, it was pretty obvious that I was never going to create “The Dude” of Pages. I needed to shoot from the hip… like a ‘gun-toting Jewish-convert with post traumatic Stress Disorder’ such as Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) in ‘The Big Lebowski.’ But before I could roll… I needed to learn the rules.

1. “Donny you’re out of your element” – Walter Sobchak
I was naive, impressionable and amped to do a campaign exclusively on Twitter because I thought it would be a great way of reaching my core market, 18-34 yr old international backpackers. In my defence this was at a time where I was attending Tweet breakfasts, helping Ashton to his1,000,000 followers and refusing to speak to people unless it involved less than 140 characters! It was the future after all and pretty much a no brainer ! Then one day whilst asking myself “What are you doing now?” I had an epiphany: “@KevLippy Do some #Analysis 4 the campaign!”

Incredibly, what I found was that only 50% of my target market even knew what Twitter was at the time… and only 14% were on it, let alone the ones that were actually ‘active’ users. My own intuition told me that 99% were more likely to have a box of goon in their hand than a mobile device, which is pretty much required to handle the immediacy of Tweets. Conversely, 83% are on Facebook, and not just passively. For example 70% of backpackers use Facebook to upload their photos. I also quickly learned that Facebook ‘Pages’ were the way forward, and that Facebook groups were dead. while I created a Facebook page campaign, I did end up incorporating Twitter, primarily to facilitate messages to others in the travel industry.

2: “The Dude abides” – The Dude
In building my page I scoped out my favourite pages and tried to model my page on theirs. This proved difficult as ‘The Dude(s)’ of Pages, such as Discovery Channel and Red Bull often had purpose built apps. This was out of the question for my budget. So I specialised in finding the coolest free apps (there were plenty!). My favourite is “FBML” which is essentially a box that you can have HTML on your side-wall.

3. “I’m not Mr Lebowski. You’re Mr Lebowski. I’m The Dude” – The Dude
The average backpacker probably perceives us as just ‘a bed.’ It’s not like many people would actively look to become a fan of our brand ‘just because.’ So I decided to create the campaign based around a character called “Backpacking Mate” which;
a. Humanised us – this opened the door to us joining the conversation. It allows us to talk with (not to) our fans. We try not to push-market but are still able to get key messages across subtly.

b. Allowed us to be everywhere - We can send Backpacking Mate from Broome - Byron - Belgrade in a matter of minutes, being that he is an animated fictional character, and that his preferred mode of transport is Photoshop. This also keeps him interesting.


4. “Nobody F***s with The Jesus” – Jesus Quintana
In this regard I consider “The Jesus” to be our “Fans”. Whenever I post anything I ask myself “If I was a backpacker would I want to see this?” I try my best to only speak when I have a significant deal, discount, or a valuable piece of information that I believe will benefit them. Company agendas, inevitably get in the way… but I do try.

Part 2 will be delivered on Wednesday

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Advertising's Young Minds: The top 27 blogs of people under 27 (September Update)

As promised here is the update of the Advertising Young Minds list: The Top 27 (53) blogs of advertising bloggers under 27. I will do the next update in December, if you are eligible for the list, drop me your URL, country and age in the comments.

Blog Name		Country	Google Reader	Tech Authority Score	Tech Reactions 10	Total
1	Jack Cheng (25)	US	1021	167	209	1397
2	Noah Brier (27)	US	729	309	87	1125
3	Young PR (25)	AUS	751	174	63	988
4	Digital Buzz (24)	AUS	612	111	63	786
5	Adspace Pioneers (24)	AUS	244	337	82	663
6	The Lost Jacket	USA	237	55	144	436
7	Jye Smith (23)	AUS	56	260	27	343
8	Heron Preston (26)	US	238	51	13	302
9	Selective Amnesia (27)	IND	222	33	11	266
10	Yaybia (22-24)	USA	179	58	19	256
11	Ryan Stephens Marketing	USA	146	92	0	238
12	Cellar Door (27)	US	122	63	28	213
13	The-Ad-Pit (27)	UK	120	53	21	194
14	Confessions of a Wannabe Adman (25)	UK	112	61	17	190
15	Creative in London (26)	UK	140	13	28	181
16	Pigs Don’t Fly (20)	AUS	52	95	24	171
17	The Spinks Blog(21)	USA	80	64	21	165
18	Adgrads (25)	UK	103	14	20	137
19	Way Cool Jnr (25)	AUS	86	50	0	136
20	Everything's Better With Brentter	USA	60	48	17	125
21	Nicola Davies (25)	UK	73	36	13	122
22	Advertising Pawn (26)	FRA	29	19	48	96
23	Trend Planner (24)	UK	46	16	9	71
24	Nil Desperandum (27)	HK	19	34	7	60
25	Don´t go dizzy (?)	ROM	42	7	9	58
26	More Stupid than the others (20)	UK	50	5	2	57
27	Lexy Klain (25)	AUS	33	14	6	53
28	Michael Karnjanaprakorn (27)	US	32	11	5	48
29	OMG With Emily (?)	AUS	26	13	4	43
30	CIIMS (25)	AUS	27	8	5	40
31	Who is in control of your brand (25)	AUS	5	8	25	38
32	Quintessentially Digital (25)	AUS	22	9	2	33
33	Lauren Fernandez (?)	USA	23	9	0	32
34	Stuff That Is Relevant	?	31	1	0	32
35	Joely Righteous (23)	AUS	11	11	8	30
36	I hate Ads	AUS	22	5	1	28
37	Refined Geek (24)	AUS	15	7	1	23
38	Digestion (?)	US	10	8	4	22
39	Gruen Transfer (21)	AUS	11	6	1	18
40	Who put the devil in you? (?)	AUS	12	4	0	16
41	Love number two (	AUS	9	5	0	14
42	Maloney on marketing (26)	AUS	6	4	4	14
43	Post Modern PR	UK	4	5	4	13
44	Kruppy Rants (27)	AUS	9	3	0	12
45	Michael Allison	CAN	9	3	0	12
46	Simon Says (20)	AUS	3	4	4	11
47	Accidental Thinking (26)	US	9	0	0	9
48	The Bottom Rung (22)	CAN	2	4	2	8
49	Frank, Hayley and the circus (22)	AUS	4	3	1	8
50	Another Advertising Wanker (26)	AUS	2	3	0	5
51	Chris Kamen (26)	?	4	0	1	5
52	Think Chimp	AUS	2	0	0	2
53	AMC Guy (21)	USA	0	0	0	0
54	Sidere (26)	SPA	0	0	0	0

Requirements to be on the list
1. Your blog must be written in english

2. Your blog must have been active for the past 3 months

3. Your blog must show some original thinking, it´s not enough to have a blog with ads to be in this list.

4. You must be 27 years old or under

5. You must work or want to work in advertising or any other marketing communications specialty, it doesn´t matter if you´re a planner, copywriter, art director, account executive or else.

6. You can only have one blog in the rank.

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