There is no question that tapping into the power of communities has great potential for marketers. There have never been more opportunities to speak with those who share common interests, tastes, afflictions, friends, occupations, faiths, aspirations, hobbies, attitudes or any other element that might unite them – including brand preference. Collectively they have the ability to influence those around them as their opinion is generally respected by those in their ‘community’.

More often than not these days the communities being targeted are virtual. They might exist as a database, perhaps they’ve opted in to hear more about their topic of interest. Maybe they’re simply friends of friends. Quite often we learn more and more about them over time but in many cases it’s only rarely that we interact with them face to face.

Recently we attended a campaign launch hosted by our friends from Origin. The coal seam gas campaign is intended for the communities of south west Queensland, especially those areas where Origin’s operations are most active such as Miles, Chinchilla and Roma. The campaign materials feature real people who volunteered their time to appear. Local farmers are shown along with the Origin liaison officers they work with as well as an assortment of regular townspeople who are supportive of the benefits Origin’s activities bring to their community.

These people formed the invitee list for the launch. Around 130 real people gathered at a venue in Miles to view the commercials and enjoy the status that comes with being seen as the stars of the show on the big screen. The Origin folks did a great job of rightly making them feel special and galvanizing them as a supportive community.

It was really interesting to see this community come together from all walks of life. From mechanics to motel operators, graziers to junior football mums. Once the commercials started playing real emotions were on show from this community. As people saw images of their family on screen many clapped and cheered. Some even cried with delight. It was an eye opener to see how they responded and interacted with each other given many of them were strangers at the start of the evening.

We can’t always be as fortunate as we were at the launch to actually see and hear the people in the communities we look to develop and nurture as marketers. But it’s truly worth remembering that each community comprises real people with real emotions. I realise this might sound incredibly obvious but every name on the database is someone who is immensely proud of their loved ones. Whether the campaign is considered to be socially based or not.

The strong ties of family might just be an ingredient worth considering more often when we look to connect with communities, no matter what form they take.

Alan Kewley is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

We have a bit of a tradition here at BCM at this time of the year. We like to stop, get together and thank people individually for the unique contribution they have made to the agency.  We’re so lucky to have such an amazing crew of hard working, talented people, who give it their all.

To everyone at BCM (and their families) for the amazing effort and occasional late nights, sincere thanks for your hard work. And thanks for making 2010 fun.

A very merry and safe Christmas to all.

Bill, Paul, Kev

In Britain, a lot of emphasis is placed around having the #1 selling hit of the Christmas season. Novelty songs dominated for a long time. Over recent years the biggest seller has always been released by the winner of Simon Cowell’s X Factor. It’s accepted that winning that competition guarantees you the smash hit Christmas song for the holiday season. This year’s winner Joe McElderry was almost assured of the same success.

However this year a couple from Essex, Jon and Tracy Morter, were determined to buck the trend. Via their Facebook group called Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No.1 they recruited half a million people to purchase an old Rage Against the Machine song specifically to outsell the X Factor winner. They put their social networking efforts behind RATM’s classic from the early 90’s ‘Killing in the Name’.

It sold 502, 672 copies, outselling Joe McElderry’s song by about 50,000 and so has won the bragging rights as this year’s UK Christmas hit.  It’s also the UK’s first download-only Christmas number one and has achieved the biggest one week download sales total in British chart history.

What a great example of harnessing the power of social media.

Having seen how successful this was I’m proud to announce the launch of my own personal crusade to influence the UK’s music chart across next year’s holiday season.

It’s time for Dave Warner’s seminal 1978 classic ‘Just a suburban boy’ to get its long overdue recognition and make its way onto iPods everywhere.

If that doesn’t appeal (as if it wouldn’t!!) then I wonder what will dominate next year? Was the Rage Against the Machine reaction a one off stunt or is it the start of a trend where weight is thrown behind more and more bizarre choices just to upset the establishment?

Maybe it has more far reaching implications than the UK music chart.

Does anyone else like the sound of the Brand Power lady winning next year’s Gold Logie?

Alan Kewley is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

Today we launched a new eCard for Queensland Transport and Main Roads as part of the ongoing brand campaign, Here for Life.

During the first stage of the Here for Life campaign, we asked people to share their stories of how road trauma had affected their lives. The photos from these stories form the basis of a very personal and powerful road safety message.

Christmas reminds us what life is all about. The special times and the special people in our lives. So take some time today to send this card to those you care about. It just might make a difference.

Sarah Ferguson is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

Some of you may have been following the recent kerfuffle over Toyota Yaris’ social media experiment. They had a ‘user-generated’ competition to see which idea they would run with – unlimited parameters and seemingly little brief outside of a few guidelines.

While I don’t agree with the ‘throw the brief out there’ approach to social media (and there are several examples out there showing how badly this can turn out), the winning idea in this case certainly has generated its fair share of comment.

THIS IS A BIG WHACKING DISCLAIMER: IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED BY SEXUAL INNUENDO PLEASE DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO

…… I don’t know who you are but I suspect you clicked on the YouTube video regardless of my warning.

And you are not alone -- over 100,000 people in the last week have watched the video via rogue YouTube posts (because Toyota took it down after negative feedback started to flood in) specifically because of that kind of disclaimer.

Going through the feedback it works out to be about a 50:50  love it or hate relationship. Even if people have commented negatively on the video, they’ve also passed it on to probably at least 10 friends as the number of views show.

I hate to say it, regardless of their ‘reaction’ -- if they’ve passed it on, they have already engaged with the communication.

And you do have to wonder about human nature. Should we as marketers be looking to the old adage ‘Do what I say, not what I do’ or does social marketing prove that this is a dead and buried approach, and in fact turns it on its head?

Social marketing channels like YouTube and Facebook are becoming measurable research tools in their own right.

The Toyota Yaris ‘experiment’ was specifically targeted for a GenY market where “I’m ready to blow” means I’m out of here. I get it.

Even as a non GenY-er but someone who values getting the message out there I have to think that the winning video is bang on.

It’s a bold and potentially scary world out there. What do you think?

Sarah Ferguson is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

I recently stumbled upon a presentation that I think is worth sharing. It was given by Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research who recently spoke at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York.

The clip runs for 18 minutes and contains a lot of concepts as the presenter speaks quite quickly and really rattles through a lot of territory within that time.

Called ‘Streams of Content’ the key analogy of the presentation is likening the flow of information in modern society to a stream.

That is, rather than relying on centralised tools for disseminating information, she talks about living in the stream and having the ability to add to the information that flows all around us. From a business point of view she talks about consuming and producing content alongside customers.

Danah also discusses providing access to information in a relevant and timely way, and making it accessible within the ever expanding surrounding stream -- without having people feel overwhelmed. Easier said than done, but that’s one of many challenges she presents.

She talks about the collapsing of distribution barriers and the power shift to those who control attention rather than distribution.

I find this idea of information broking interesting, especially when it comes to the role of the sharer versus that of the content creator.

As has been mentioned in some previous Two Cents blogs, there’s no doubt that there’s some kudos in being the first person to spread content that you think others might enjoy. But does the sharer of that information deserve more credit than the creator? I wouldn’t have thought so.

Aggregating and sharing content just as I’m doing now offers a convenient, easily digested summary, but it’s hardly as onerous as generating the original material.

However, research conducted on Twitter highlighted that many people consider crediting the person you heard it from was more important than crediting the author. Fascinating.

Not so long ago many industries had a clear creator/distributor model. Program creators developed TV content which was then broadcast by the networks, bands created music that was distributed by record companies, journalists generated articles published by newspapers and magazines and so on.

It was a given that the distributors often profited more than the creators.  Now, even with the traditional distribution barriers broken down, there’s no guarantee that the creator will earn the credit due to them.

As Danah says in her presentation:

“There’s an assumption that if we get rid of the limitations to distribution the power will revert to the creators. This is not what’s happening. Distribution today is making people aware that they can come and get something.

Those who get access to people’s attention are a very small and privileged population. What’s emerging is the power of the modern day information broker.”

Clearly, as the information stream continues to expand, attention will become the new currency. Those who can capture and retain attention will be more important than ever.

Alan Kewley is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

By its very nature, social media seems to be ever-evolving and is constantly in a state of flux. In particular, Facebook has seen seismic levels of growth in recent months, making it difficult to source up-to-date statistics and figures.

However, at BCM we like to keep staff, clients and other interested parties as up to date as possible, so here’s a quick snapshot of the current Facebook landscape.

1. Facebook now has more than 350 million users worldwide
2. On average, 50% of its active users log on to Facebook everyday
3. An average user has 130 friends on Facebook
4. There are more than 55 million status updates daily
5. More than 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to the site each month
6. An average user spends over 55 minutes per day on Facebook
7. More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc) are shared each week
8. More than 3.5 million events are created each month
9. More than 70 translations are available on the site and about 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
10. Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage in Platform applications
11. More than 350,000 active applications are on Facebook’s Platform
12. More than 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users
13. More than 15,000 websites, devices and applications have integrated Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008
14. There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
15. People who use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active than non-mobile users!

Given how rapidly these figures keep changing, it’ll be interesting to see how current they are within even the next few months. And feel free to let us know of any other useful Facebook facts and figures that you are aware of.

Steve Jennings is an Account Manager at BCM Brisbane

This is a bit of an embarrassing question, but am I the only person who feels like a social media outcast after watching the top 5 viral videos in What Next? Does anyone else feel a little excluded when they read that a couple of million people have found a 10-minute video of cars doing wheelies and other ‘rev-head’ stuff enthralling, and you haven’t? Am I the only one who finds that, after 10 seconds of viewing some guy kicking a football in slow motion, even my toenails start falling asleep?

Seriously, I’ve often wondered what kind of people pass these sorts of videos around. Then, suddenly the answer hit me – it’s men! And just as suddenly, it struck me that there seems to be a rather interesting gender divide on the internet. Because, while guys are passing round videos of cars, sport and scantily clad females in desperate need of breast reduction surgery, women are sending each other very different types of emails.

Let me illustrate my point. Who’s ever received that mushy “National Girlfriend’s Day” email? Or that very flattering (but highly suspect) personal Christmas card from George Clooney? Or how about that little pink animated woman who’s walking around the world for breast cancer? For every man who’s wondering what on earth I’m talking about here, I’ll bet there’s a woman who’s received all these emails and others like them, at least once.

OK, I know that’s not a very scientific way to demonstrate the differences between male and female emails, so I did a little research and here’s what I found out.

A study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project identified that, while men are more tech savvy and interested in technology, women are actually more likely to use email than men, and value it for enriching their relationships with friends, family and work colleagues.

The Pew study also reveals that more women than men send on emails about news, concerns, advice and plans: in fact, women both send and receive more email overall than men.

Another report from Forrester Research, says women are also 30 percent more likely than men to think that email is a good way to find out about products and promotions. And they are 46 percent more likely to share marketing emails with friends.

So it’s pretty obvious that any marketer – particularly any male marketer – who hopes to engage women on the internet, needs to factor these gender differences into their online communications. But I suspect, being male marketers means they’ll need some good examples to help them get a better understanding of the types of emails women pass around.

Time to tap into the female network to help me compile a collection of ‘female emails’. Send me some examples of the emails you’ve felt motivated to forward on – particularly to other women. Simply forward them on to femails@bcm.com.au, and stay tuned – I promise to publish the most popular ones on this blog.

Deb Enright is a Senior Writer at BCM

Tired of classmates from primary school requesting to be your friend on Facebook? Found yourself having a passive-aggressive argument via a comment thread on a blog or forum?  Sick of seeing incessant drivel coming through on Twitter?

Well it’s time the social web grew up, went to finishing school, learnt some manners, and to paraphrase the famous Ron Burgundy, “stayed classy”.

Our presence on online social networks has intensified the impact of our interactions with family, friends and associates. We are now able to locate, connect, and contact people at a increased speed which has resulted in a new set of expectations for social encounters online.

The etiquette of ignoring, friending, unfriending (the Oxford Dictionary’s 2009 Word of the Year), tagging, poking and liking correctly while not accruing Championship Creepy points for your behaviour is still evolving.

I recently discussed some of the most common social-networking faux pas and how to avoid them during my fortnightly segment with Kelly-Higgins Devine on ABC 612 Brisbane.

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Have a listen by clicking the play button above and tell me any stories you have experienced when you’ve been put into an awkward situation on a online social networking site.

Whether it was overaggressive friending by people you don’t really have a connection with or someone oversharing the information they have disclosed to their entire friend list then I’d love to hear about it.

Anthony Dever is BCM’s Interactive Strategist

Hardly a day goes past in the marketing world without yet another revelation relating to social media – and the myriad of claims of its hero-like properties.

However, the reality is that expectations will not be met unless there’s a clearer understanding on all sides about how ‘social’ works, the necessary on-going investment in both time and money, and an acknowledgement of its limitations.

Social media is not a one-size-fits-all solution and it cannot:

Be a substitute for a marketing strategy
A Facebook fan page or a Twitter campaign promoting your weekly offers is not a standalone marketing strategy.

Be a success without senior management buy-in
Social media requires that decision makers listen to customers, and make changes based on their feedback. It requires trust when employees talk to customers. The culture of fear (of job loss, of loss of control of the company credo, of change in general) is part of today’s corporate culture. Senior management has to want this change.

Be seen as a short-term project
Social media is not a one-off execution but rather a long-term commitment to openness, experimentation and change, requiring time to deliver results.

Be executed without a realistic budget
Websites incorporating interactivity, allowing user-generated content and e-commerce functions are not cheap. Even manipulating free software like WordPress and making it fully functional and compliant with a company’s branding requires skill, experience, and money.

Be done effectively in-house by most organisations
Successful social media campaigns integrate social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, PR and digital. The best protagonists now have more than 10 years’ experience with forums, blogs, user-generated content and competitions in an interactive environment.

It calls for strategy, contacts, tools, and experience – a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often select the wrong tools or use the wrong approach.

Be a quick fix to the bottom line or restore a tarnished reputation
Social media may provide tangible results for a company that’s already a performer – people take notice of a company like Google. However, desperation in some corporate circles is driving the conviction that a social media campaign is a quick fix to languishing sales or a damaged reputation.

Be left to “the kids” who “get social media”
Organisations running social media without experienced specialists who understand integrated communications will squander time, money and can damage their reputation. And then, sadly, many will decide that this new approach doesn’t work.

The media landscape is changing faster than ever before, and the super-hero that is social media is defining the way we now interact with it. Just don’t rely on it to save the world at every turn though…

Steve Jennings is an Account Manager at BCM Brisbane