You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2009.
You may have noticed, I'm all about encouraging everyone to use twitter. Well, today I'm going to warn you about the perils of tweeting indiscriminately.
Here's a marketing concept Little Black Blog can really get behind, for obvious reasons. Via Dabitch at advertising news
This "Earth Day" on March 28th, people are being asked to turn out lights and unplug electrical appliances for a pre-determined hour:
Arla Milk in Sweden decided to join in bigtime. [...] their biggest contribution is the black milk carton created as a reminder to everyone who drinks milk. Which is pretty much everyone. You can already find these black milk cartons in the shops today, and they will be produced in black until Saturday when they switch back to their regular white/green & white/red stripes.
This "Earth Day" on March 28th, people are being asked to turn out lights and unplug electrical appliances for a pre-determined hour:
Arla Milk in Sweden decided to join in bigtime. [...] their biggest contribution is the black milk carton created as a reminder to everyone who drinks milk. Which is pretty much everyone. You can already find these black milk cartons in the shops today, and they will be produced in black until Saturday when they switch back to their regular white/green & white/red stripes.
Informative article this morning at BusinessWeek, about the companies that are using Twitter effectively. (In other words, using the medium as a two-way street and not as a PR megaphone). These people are listening.
I've had this one tucked away for a couple of years. It's one of my all-time favorites. Pure genius. Note: Don't scroll, just watch.
There's an abundance of great creative out there, so rather than keep it all to myself, I've decided to implement a new feature here at the Little Black Blog and showcase some of it in a new section thoughtfully titled "Great Creative" (catchy huh?). I'll be going back and dumpster diving through the archives for some older stuff, but for the inaugural post, here's a recent series by Puma that I found over at AdRants featuring underwear clad models in Puma footwear. Everything else (clothing and environment) is projection. Great concept and execution.
My moral compass is pinging all over the place because of this story. It's not that I have trouble believing that MoMA might be complicit, even though they're claiming not to be, or that "the Matisse of subway-ad mash-ups", Poster Boy has lost his fragile boho-artiste street cred by selling his art to an ad agency, or that an ad agency would destroy it's own advertising to garner publicity... it's just that if it's all a put on, it's so multi-layered that it's either brilliant or really annoying. I'm an eternal optimist, so I vote for brilliant, but I'll let you be the judge.
In strict ROI terms the value of twitter isn't measurable, which is why there's still an ongoing debate about it's value in business.
The problem arises because business managers tend to think of "social media" and in particular Twitter, as a means in and of itself for increasing profit (i.e. for selling a product). But Twitter needn't (and imo shouldn't) be used as an advertising venue, to flog a service or product.
Rather it's a tool, to be used for adapting to your business and building your brand in the social sphere, and one which translates across your entire enterprise - HR, R&D, IT, customer service, etc.
Twitter opens the door to forming relationships with your audience, communicating market and/or technical knowledge, as well as providing word-of-mouth.
And then there's customer feedback, which is invaluable for all segments of your business - companies can learn about their products, and their customers - from their customers. They can learn how their products and services are perceived, and what they can improve.
A lot of companies are afraid of the perceived "loss of control" in the social media sphere, but it's far more important to be listening to what your customers are saying, than being fearful of responding to criticism.
An homage to the benefits of self employment in unordered list form. By no means comprehensive, and feel free to add your own...
If you work from home, you can watch your pets or someone elses for that matter do whatever it is they do all day.
You can listen to whatever music you like, as loud as you like, without headphones!
Work when you're inspired – you can take as many breaks as you want during the day, and work all night if you have to.
Personal hygiene is (frighteningly) optional.
The coffee is better!
Skittles new social media experiment - the surrendering of skittles.com to twitter, is an interesting, but ultimately hollow, marketing campaign.
Hollow because the idea of turning over control of the website to twitter has already been done, and done more effectively, by Boston-based ad agency Modernista. In their hands, the social marketing message/concept meshes well with Modernistas openly stated desire to take creative risks and work with clients who are open to experimentation.
In the case of Skittles, the creative becomes a marketing ploy that was lifted from someone else and applied to a candy in order to garner publicity.
There's no question that they've achieved their goal, but does it make me want to buy their product? No. And knowing the origins of the creative concept waters down its effect considerably.
As for Modernista - I can't wait to see what they do next.
A friend posted this awesome link from The Lost Turntable on Facebook. It's Paul McCartney and Freelance Hellraiser (wish I'd thought of the name). Anyway, McCartney is doing some very cool stuff lately. First Fireman with Youth (from Killing Joke), and now this. Give it a listen, you'll be amazed. Oh, and if you haven't heard the Fireman yet give it a whirl too.