Two Cents

As each natural disaster happens in the world I watch with interest the ever increasing role that digital and mobile technologies play in driving disaster relief efforts.

Take the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January. The response for aid was astounding and more rapid than other recent natural disasters.

Social networking certainly played a key role with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all involved. A survey conducted by Facebook and The Nielsen Company in the week following the earthquake revealed 39% of Facebook users in the US, UK and Australia had already donated money or goods to the relief efforts (24% from Australia).

In addition, 21% of Facebook users who had not yet given to the cause planned to do so. Meaning an incredible 60% of Facebook users in the US, UK and Australia had donated or planned to donate money or goods, which clearly shows the growing importance and effectiveness of Facebook as a marketing tool and its power to activate people.

According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy in the days immediately following the Haiti earthquake more than $150 million in relief had been contributed. This is said to be five times the amount donated in the days immediately following the 2004 Asian tsunamis and more than the $108 million received in the first four days after Hurricane Katrina.

Another significant issue in this latest relief effort is that the relatively new method of text message donations really took off. The Red Cross campaign was promoted on Twitter and Facebook. On the Thursday (48 hours after the earthquake) text message donations hit $3 million and by Friday morning this figure had more than doubled to $8 million, with Red Cross among the 10 most popular topics on Twitter. To put this in context, in all of 2009, the Red Cross received $4 million in mobile text donations.

And even more interestingly, the Big Four mobile operators in the States (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile) reportedly not only waived fees on text message donations, but they advanced the transfer of verified donations (rather than just passing along the funds once the monthly bill was paid).

Is this a significant business opportunity for telecom companies that could lead to a big shift in financial services? Futurist and Chairman of the trends forecasting company Global Change Ltd, Dr Patrick Dixon, certainly thinks so:

What do you think?

Tracy Straughan is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

Twhat up tweeps? Are you sick of those hipster twicksters making up their own twords whenever they reference anything to do with Twitter?

Twexting. Tweeting up. Tweethearts. Twoublemakers. Twublicity… the “tw” craze took the online jargon world by storm in 2009 and like a rollicking mexican wave rolling around the Gabba cricket ground at a 20-20, we’d like to play our part in pushing the misuse of language along in 2010.

So in the spirit of making up new words, attention-seeking behaviour and experimentation… we bring you our new ‘Twebsite‘.

With the upcoming launch of the shiny new BCM website just around the corner, we’ve created an interim Twitter-based website to give users a sneak preview of the new site’s design and content.

Created partly as a demonstration of how social media platforms can seamlessly link together, and partly because we like playing buzzword bingo, our new Twebsite has certainly thrown the tongue-in-cheek cat amongst the industry pigeons.

Some of our favourite comments so far include…

From here on out, anyone who creates a word with the prefix “tw-” in the hopes of being seen as cutting edge gets a courtesy dose of herpes. – likeomg

Every time I hear ‘Twebsite’ I throw up a little in my mouth. I hope to one day throw up in the mouth of whoever at BCM came up with it. – Warlach

There is a new word out there “twebsite” – a website that uses multiple Twitter pages to form a website – Mikjryan

You’re right: twetarded! RT@the_enthusiast: Oh man, I just lost my temper on Mumbrella. Some companies are twucked. – dalecampisi

RT @mumbrella: Agency claims 1st ‘Twebsite’ “harvest the functionality of social media platforms” #wordsdouchebagssay – acatinatree

Word of the day : Twebsite….not a bad idea for a placeholder website. – siddarthdas

I don’t understand agencies that have social media gimmicks on their website – what do they think this is supposed to demonstrate? Are these the same agencies agencies that had podcasts 5 years ago? Or geocities sites 10 years ago? Or hypercolour promo t’s 20 years ago? – Larry

To all of you, thanks for caring and taking the time out of your busy lives to comment. We hope you don’t take it too seriously.

And despite the expected brouhaha over the name, we’re really pleased with how it has turned out as a short-term placeholder. The Twebsite will remain live until our brand spankin’ new agency site launches in a few week’s time.

Now off to pick up our hypercolour promo t-shirts from the printers… and apologies in advance to our copywriters for my crimes against the written word.

Scott Esdaile is BCM’s Social Media Manager

2009 was a tough year on the career front for many Australians. Redundancies were widespread as companies endeavoured to cope with an uncertain economic climate.
 
The employer marketing and recruitment advertising sectors were highly sensitive to the economic slowdown, with reduced marketing budgets calling for smarter thinking, greater ROI and diversification across the board. The job market had taken a big hit, shifting the dynamic for HR professionals who had previously been dealing with skills shortages and a candidate short market. Inevitably, print media suffered a free-fall in advertising revenue.

From our own agency experiences with employer marketing, the job market appeared to be in recovery late last year – hopefully a barometer of an improving economy – even prompting expert comments of forthcoming skills shortages in some sectors. The credible medium of print, still preferable for sourcing the elusive ‘passive’ candidates, should continue to perform when targeting the baby boomer and senior executive markets but for the rest, the migration to online looks set to continue.

Companies and recruiters alike are continuing to use popular job boards such as SEEK, CareerOne and MyCareer to advertise vacancies, as well as many other niche and industry specific boards.

Mirroring a shift in B2B and B2C communications, we are also seeing social media assist recruiters in candidate vetting and appraisal (so watch those privacy settings on Facebook!). Equally, job seekers are using networks such as LinkedIn – where it really is in their interests to publish (rather than hide) as much relevant information as possible – all to improve employment prospects.

A recent innovation, Brazen Careerist, allows the modern professional to not only showcase their CV but also share ideas and engage with peers in their field, giving them control in a social network that they are happy to share information with.

Another interesting site is KODA, the imaginatively titled “opportunity community”, where employers can take a closer look at young professionals with talents beyond posting a CV in Word format.

This brings me to the latest example: Hire me, HeadBlade (which unsurprisingly led to the sequel, HeadBlade Hired Me!).

This recent success story in how to score your dream job in the new economy is further proof that people can create their own cut-through in competitive fields if they treat job seeking like an industry project or campaign. The bottom line: identify what it is you want to do and where you belong, and go the extra mile.

With innovation and increased usage of social media channels by job seekers, so too increases the need for businesses (as employers) to understand and be actively using these channels to their benefit to source the best available candidates. As the economy improves and, if as predicted, skills shortages make their presence felt, so the spotlight will turn back on employers as they strive to position themselves ahead of the competition. We might then see increased traffic to employer review sites such as JobVent, Glassdoor.com or Vault – and a return to larger budget employer marketing websites and campaign microsites as employers work harder to attract the right candidates.

As every employer would be aware, their human capital is the most important asset they have.

Steve Jennings is an Account Manager at BCM Brisbane

If you are a regular Facebook user you may be wondering what is going on with all your gal friends.

Status updates stating a particular colour are currently the rage but if you are part of that 50% of the population that have the Y chromosome, you are probably clueless as to what is going on.

Here is what it’s all about….

We’re not really sure where it started. One theory is that it’s very clever marketing from one of the hundreds of Breast Cancer organisations across the globe (really??).

The fact is that this game of Chinese Whispers has massive potential for commercial use.

The precedent has been set with Twitterer Kim Kardashian being reportedly paid $10,000 US to Tweet brands to her 2.8 million followers.

Could this be the way to embrace Facebook as a channel and spread brand loyalty?

What do you think?

Sarah Ferguson is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

News flash people – consumers aren’t waiting with bated breath for our next campaign. They’re far too busy, cynical and jaded to care.

But they will give us the time of day if we create something of value. Let me give you an example.

QUT, which operates in the higher education category, recently wanted to promote its Master of Business (Public Relations) degree. The course is specifically designed for PR practitioners who want to upgrade their professional qualifications.

In the old days we would have dutifully taken advertising in some professional journal, perhaps advertised on some industry websites, sent out a press release and maybe done some direct mail. We would have spent the budget in 4-6 weeks and hopefully generated a result.

But if you subscribe to the idea of creating value not just creating ads, then you take a completely different approach.

This thinking led to the creation of Tweepr – a website which aggregates, in real time, the thoughts and observations of Australia’s top 100 most followed PR specialists on Twitter.

If you’re in PR then having access to the top 100 gives you tips, observations and insights from industry thought leaders and rising stars.

It’s the stuff ambitious, motivated industry types are likely to find invaluable and it’s exactly these types that QUT would like to attract to their masters degree.

The other benefit of creating something of value is that it gets traction. PR people are actively sharing Tweepr with other PR people, discussing colleagues’ ranks in the top 100 and writing about it on their blogs.

So we haven’t just created advertising, we’ve curated content – and we’ve produced something which has ongoing value beyond the 4-6 week campaign cycle that used to be the norm.

If the buzz we’ve created amongst the PR fraternity on Twitter is any indication, then it’s proof positive that this is a winning approach.

Kevin Moreland is a Partner at BCM

For those of you in Brisbane or Sydney, you may have thought you lived on Mars today with the eerie clouds of red dust over our skies – in fact both “Dune” and “Total Recall” have been referenced several times.

While we are all now pretty convinced of the marketing capabilities of Twitter, it is interesting to see how it is being used by the average Joe for events and things that are of real-time interest.

I tested this out following the Brisbane Riverfire fireworks display two weeks ago – by midnight on Saturday 12 September there were over 700 tweets related to Riverfire and there had been over 2,000 tweets by the Monday morning.

In the context of the whole twittersphere that might not have seemed like much – indeed Riverfire was only up as a trending topic for about an hour before it was knocked off, but this early in the piece I can only guess how many tweets there will be about this crazy dust storm.

Since the dust storm hit Brisbane around 11:45am this morning there have been over 250…no…276…no…289…345…426… (sheesh I’ve given up trying to count) tweets with a great collection of #duststorm photos to be found on the Twitcaps aggregator site:

While the Trendsmap website shows up an interesting collection of words being used this morning by Sydney twitter users:

So if you are still feeling nervous about Twitter because you feel the pressure to always talk about something witty and intelligent, remember that the real-time nature of Twitter has been a driving factor in its rapid growth in popularity – allowing users to group together over shared experiences, or collectively break news stories as they happen.

Sarah Ferguson is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

Several days ago I was mighty pissed off with Space Property Agents at Paddington in Brisbane. Since my gripe doesn’t make for scintillating reading I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say after several weeks of poor service, inaction, lies and getting no joy (despite flagging my concerns with the Principal of the business early on) in absolute frustration I did what any self respecting new millenium man would do:

I turned to the Internet and tweeted.

Now I only have a modest 247 followers on Twitter. But within 5 minutes my tweet  had been retweeted 4 times. Doesn’t sound like much does it? But wait…. I was curious so I did some investigation of the total number of followers each of the retweets equated to. I was astounded.

Within 5 minutes the potential for 247 followers to read my gripe increased to 16,684 people. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s remarkable.

Now I know the impact of this pales in comparison against some of the high profile social media ‘consumer-action’ case studies that are widely published, but it nonetheless demonstrates that as consumers we have more power than ever to communicate the positive or negative experiences we have.

Perhaps its time to update the old adage ‘Buyer Beware’.

Kevin Moreland is a Partner at BCM

Sitting in the 3 Store at Bondi Junction trying to get a dodgy wireless modem sorted out, it struck me there was something wrong with this picture as the dumbstruck shop assistant was hung up on by technical support for the 4^th consecutive time.

This also coincided with the fact that I had just demolished a third latte in the space of about an hour and was starting to act like an angry hornet looking for someone to sting.

Then it dawned on me, what will the future of on-premise retail look like?  Will I have to deal with incompetent shop assistants 30 years from now, or will I be served efficiently and without fuss by a humanoid robot like Sonny from I, Robot?

Face it, the customer service experience is changing and thanks to RFID and barcode technology in the not too distant future we’ll be able to simply point and click at a coat someone walking past is wearing and have an onscreen menu pop up on our iPhone with the brand, colour, and size options – as well as an option to purchase now.

Some savvy retailers are also capitalising on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to add value to the whole customer service experience.

Take the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer Best Buy Co, for instance, who have recently launched Twelpforce an online service that encourages hundreds of their employees to handle online customer service enquiries via Twitter.

The mechanic is simple, customers simply ask any product related question on Twitter, and a specialised team member who has opted in for the subject matter or product field relating to your enquiry answers.

I’m hoping it’s not just me, but the appeal and benefits to the consumer of such a system will far outweigh any initial teething problems that such a system encounters.  Not only will you not waste your time dealing with a member of staff who so obviously does not know the answer to your query (sorry Karl!), but you will also benefit from getting feedback from the right specialist person immediately the first time round.

What’s the appeal to the retailer you may then ask?

I would suggest that for a market leading retailer like Best Buy there are several.  Namely, they can maintain a competitive advantage in an increasingly cluttered and ubiquitous market where millions of dollars are spent each year to find that much sought after point of difference.

They can radically improve the overall customer experience, without even mentioning improving efficiency and reducing the cost incurred from lost sales.

And most importantly, they can exhibit to their customers that they understand the new world order, appreciate their ever changing demands, and that the brand practices what it preaches.

The chief marketing officer for Best Buy, Barry Judge espouses:

“The old paradigm is you open your doors and hope someone comes in.  In the new world, you can go out and find people that are talking about technology and what they’re interested in buying, and be generous with your knowledge. And hopefully if you’re generous and knowledgeable, people will come and buy.” 

So in parting, raise a glass to the forward thinking guys at Best Buy and the new world order.  I for one would do the same but have just realised even though it’s lunch on Friday and the sun is shining outside we have a Facebook training session with Anthony so I might just have to settle for an iPint instead.

Simon Jarvis is a Group Account Director at BCM Sydney

Stop, desist, quit tricking journalists.

Life is not easy for journalists. They have to find, fabricate, buy and otherwise invent stories that contain matters of great misery to other people. It’s a thankless task.

Do they get paid by the tear? Are they rewarded on a crash by crash basis?
Is there a flame bonus? No.

On top of that there are simply not enough tragedies to go around.

But things have recently got even worse.

Journalists have a new crisis. It’s us. We are feeding them fake news. How the hell can journalists be expected to sort out the fake news from the real? “Click, click, boom”, she says. Roll tape. “Jeff Goldblum’s dead”. Cue Camera 1.

And now, to our horror, we find that the callous driver reported in the media to have stepped over an injured truck driver to steal a carton of his pumpkins was yet another public lie.

Will we ever be able to believe anything we read ever again?

The answer, bloggers and Tweeters, is in your hands.

I’ve seen some bizarre uses for Twitter in the last few months (augmented reality t-shirt anyone?) but this one takes the cake (quite literally). If it wasn’t for the fact it’s now 8 days into April, I thought I would have been well fooled by this one.

It’s called BakerTweet. It’s so simple, it’s almost genius:

BakerTweet is a way for busy bakers to tell the world that something hot and fresh has just come out of the oven. It’s as simple as turning the dial and hitting the button. All of the baker’s followers get a Twitter alert to tell them that it’s bun-time. Or bread time. Or whatever.

And it’s not just a concept either – it’s up and running at Albion’s Oven in London. You can follow their freshly-baked delights at @AlbionsOven.

Watch a video!

A truly tasty and wonderful way of using Twitter! Really though, something like this says less about tasty treats, and more about what happens when you give clever developers a ball. They’ll run with it. The open nature of Twitter has allowed people to do pretty much whatever they want with it. Which means, thankfully, that way cool stuff like BakerTweet is only just the beginning.