Posts Tagged 'twitter'

No one can deny the impact social media has had on the world over the last couple of years. Facebook and Twitter are now the staple diet of over 40 million people in the UK, a figure that is not decreasing anytime soon. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, took to the stage at the eG8 conference last year to explain why social gaming company Zynga is now worth more than EA. It’s because companies like Zynga and Playfish understand that people want to play games with their friends, so they develop games with social knitted into the core of their design, incorporating TV, films, music, books and news. “People listen to music with friends; you watch TV, read the news and discuss it with friends. These industries can be rebuilt from the ground up with social”, says Zuckerberg. We are now starting to see these industries thinking more socially and when you make these companies social, the opportunities are a lot broader than they are in their current form.

Leading by example there are many apps that broke through in 2011 on the forefront of social design. Spotify, the music streaming application, lets you share songs with friends via an inbox, posting playlists and sharing what you’re listening to, while Pinterest is an online pinboard to share your favourite photos, products, designs or anything that fascinates you. Yet another social platform, BranchOut acts as a recruitment app that lets you share and recommend jobs to your friends. The list goes on with Instagram, Path, Flipboard, GetGlue and so on…

Over the next year we’re going to see more industries tap into the social nature of humans by building social design into the principles of their hardware and software. The core of social design and development is that focus is placed on the people – the way they act and engage online in a more natural way through communicating, interacting and sharing with friends, friends of friends, friends of their friends and so on. Facebook tapped into this early with features such as the friend request, “accept” or “not now”, rather than the traditional “yes” or “no”, therefore psychologically you don’t feel as bad when you decline ‘that’ request from your cousin’s friend’s brother whom you’ve never met before.

This inherently mirrors the social needs of individuals, and 2012 will see this viewpoint move into not only industries such as FMCG, retail and media but education, hospitality, financial services, insurance, real estate and construction. What industry is fundamentally not social? If my friend Bryan had his kitchen fitted by a good plumber, or my friend Jimmi recommends a good accountant he uses, this has distinct value to me. The social sphere is going to directly influence many of the decisions I make and if software is designed to help me in this decision process, then I’m going to use it.

What are some of your favourite social apps?

Over the past few months we’ve been working with Kew on ideas to support their summer marketing push ‘Visit the world without ever leaving London.’ Our solution was ‘Tweet and Grow’ – a multi-platform interactive game gives players the chance to experience the different habitats that exist within Kew.
Plant enthusiasts can put their green-fingers to the test by nurturing plants from a range of diverse habitats from the lush rainforest to the arid desert to gain virtual and real-world rewards.

Creative notes
Our design teams worked closely with the experts at Kew to ensure that the intricate elements of the game-play were matched with a faithful portrayal of the plants at each of the various stages of their growth and decay. Taking findings from Kew’s enormous pool of expertise and image research our designers illustrated each plant frame by frame so they animate in a realistic way – with a flourish of artistic license.
The pay-off is a rewarding user experience where players’ skills and dedication in tending to and nurturing their plants is rewarded with beautiful animations of their plant growing.

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Let’s set the scene, tastefully designed meeting room, inspiring brands and phrases on the wall, spectacular views from the 15th Floor, it’s the monthly marketing meeting.

“I’ve got a great campaign idea”, says the marketing manager. “It’s brilliant, unique and sure to hit home with our customers and prospects.”

“Brilliant”, exclaims the marketing director, “but what social media channels does it embrace? Is there a Twitter api element? How does it tie in to our Facebook page? How many more followers are we going to get?”

“Well we don’t really need social media integration with this idea, I was thinking we’d leave it up to the customer to decide whether they’d engage via social channels”, the marketing manager sheepishly replies.

Queue dumbstruck colleagues and looks of bewilderment around the table.

New campaigns from companies big and small today are awash with references to social media, “come find us on Facebook”, “for latest news, see our Twitter page”, “To find out whether we decide to change the colour of our logo from red to burgundy watch our Youtube video”but is this relentless pursuit of today’s marketers to embrace social media actually having a detrimental effect on the quality of the marketing campaigns as a whole?

Too often social media is used as part of a campaign framework without thought to what it will bring and who might engage. It requires careful thought, and methodical execution to get it right, yet we continue to see countless examples of the social media after thought from brands who should know better.

For some brands there is no doubt, that campaigns with a social media focus have delivered impressive performance.  Look at Whopper Sacrifice or The Streets new mix tape release as a great example of how to embrace social media as part of your marketing campaign. But for every success story there are countless let downs, fan pages abandoned after a month, twitter feeds that never get past the first 5 messages, and Youtube channels with nothing but an old advert on auto play. Be it content, delivery, or execution, creativity is important for all elemnts of campaign activity, a brilliant advertisign campaign will only extend to social media if the thought has been given to how it’s executed in these platforms, who it’s targeted at, and why they would want to engage with it.

But if the creative juices for social media just aren’t flowing, there is another solution.

Why not leave it up to the fan to decide. Coca-Cola’s ‘fan made’ Facebook page is testament to what can happen if you leave the fans in control. So if the campaign idea is brilliant, you think your target audience are sure to want to engage with it, perhaps the social media element should simply be to sit back, relax and allow others to share your content with their peers?

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