Mystery brand ‘The Foundation’ has launched a social media campaign to promote its arrival in Covent Garden, London on February 15th.
The campaign, in association with The London Film School has crowdsourced viral video content from aspiring film makers, asking them to create a movie trailer that promotes the launch of the, as yet unknown entity, in return for a cash prize and a screening in front of movie big wigs.
The competition runs until January 31st and entries can be seen and voted for here. The current leader with 95 likes is this one by Josh Bower:
The social media campaign was devised by Furlong PR in collaboration with Aardvark Media and is being promoted via Facebook & Twitter along with press activity for film and London media.
A new survey has underlined the growing importance of online video content in B2B communications.
In fact according to a Forbes Insights survey, featured in eMarketer this week, business executives not only prefer video to text on the same web page, they are more likely to engage with the vendors products and services, often leading to a purchase.
According to the study “nearly 60% of all respondents said they would watch video before reading text on the same webpage, and 22% said they generally liked watching video more than reading text for reviewing business information.”
The survey demonstrates that overall, a majority of business people watch more video than they did the previous year, with only the 50+ generation less likely to engage with video content. The findings suggest that marketers can depend on younger age groups to watch, pass along, and recommend online video content, although older age-groups should be reached by other means.
Popular video content amongst respondents included reviewing business information and work related videos on business websites or YouTube. Three-quarters of all executives said they watched work-related videos on business websites at least once a week, and more than half did the same on YouTube. More »
LinkedIn announced on their blog yesterday that video sharing is now available on their site, which is great, but the festive video card they’ve invited us to share in celebration seems, well just a bit sinister:
The latest wild instalment of Ken Block’s ‘Gymkhana’ format race video virals tops the UK viral chart this week.
Gymkhana THREE, part 2, ‘ultimate playground’ features DC shoes founder Ken Block on a skillful joyride around an urban/rural course climaxing in a sequence where he literally ‘donuts’ the tyres off his Fiesta.
While the appeal is slightly lost on me – I thought he should drive slower around the obstacles so his tyres wouldn’t wear out and he would save petrol – the Gymkhana series of 7 videos have proved extremely popular with more than 70 million views online and received numerous awards. The Gymkhana TWO video was named one of Ad Age’s “Top 10 Viral Ads of All Time””,
The social media stats show 545k+ Facebook shares, almost 15k Tweets and a massive 21+ million views on YouTube.
Walt Disney would have been 109 this month, but the company is currently marking another milestone – exceeding 100 million fans on Facebook, making it the most popular company on the social networking site.
Significantly the dramatic rise in fans over the past 16 months followed the company’s decision to regularly update the content, as well as create more than 200 different fan pages. The overall number of fans are spread across the company’s pages which feature all of Disney’s films and characters – Disney’s main Facebook page has 15,060,404 fans followed by the Toy Story page with 11,416,127.
Statistics for the company’s social media activities are similarly impressive. Fans have commented more than 1.5 million times and ‘liked, shared or commented’ on Disney’s content more than six million times. Disney achieved 60 million Facebook ‘likes’ in its first year, and now attracts about five million new fans every month. 70% of the company’s fans are women. More »
Vero Moda is an international fashion brand with outlets across Europe, Scandinavia, China and the Middle East. The brand is targeted at young women, selling quality clothing reflecting the latest trends at an affordable price.
The Challenge
Vero Moda face fierce competition for the attention of young consumers in the Middle East region. The company wanted to develop a regional online strategy to help interact with their customers and build a following using social media.
The Solution
Working with Jordan based online marketing company, The Online Project, the company launched a basic Facebook Page, to build a community around their brand, and enabling the company to connect to consumers and help them to find out more about their products and clothes lines. More »
Replies to this question I posted on LinkedIn last week ranged from:
“You can’t sell a Bentley out of a lock-up.” to “Visible signs, such as swanky offices, top-of-the range cars, very expensive lunches / five star hotels, send out the wrong signals.”
Somewhere in between was:
“I would invest in good meeting areas but keep personal work spaces modest and flexible”
This last comment is pretty much where we are in the debate.
It was a leading question because Furlong PR has just moved to Floral Street, Covent Garden where we have lovely meeting rooms and super-efficient receptionists, managed by the excellent MBW Business Exchange.
We’re still essentially a virtual operation though, there’s 16 of us, working day to day from locations dotted around London, using Floral Street as and when we need it.
We’re hoping it will be the perfect compromise, providing a professional meeting environment without the overheads of a full time office.
I had a rich friend at college who once asked me if I’d mind selling a top of the range cooker he had left over from the student house he’d just sold – he had to leave the country for tax reasons or something. Being an impecunious graduate, I happily agreed to a commission deal to sell it via Loot (this was the 90s).
So anyway, I got immediate interest from a lady in Surrey – it was exactly the model and colour (white) she was looking for and she’d come straight over to Clapham on Saturday morning with her husband and would almost certainly buy it.
So they arrive, everything about this couple is immaculate, a spotless car with natty little trailer attached, smart weekend clothes ready for lunch at the golf club, contrasting sharply, and this is where the sale began to unravel, with our gloomy, cold 60s throwback rented house which smelt a bit damp and had the sort of carpets that audibly crunch when you walk on them. More »
An announcement from Twitter yesterday could mean the days of booting up enhanced third party applications such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to manage tweets are numbered.
Twitter are introducing a two column format that allows you to see video and pictures from tweets on the right hand side of the page without clicking off the site, a move designed to make Twitter a Facebook type destination. More in this video:
While brand awareness is the key brand management objective for brand marketers in 2010, most corporate brand executives believe they are better served by online communications and traditional PR activities to reach consumers according to a new survey.
The research conducted by KRC Research for MiresBall, in the 2010 State of the Brand Report, indicates that more than two-thirds of surveyed brand marketers (68%) say online communications, is key for generating awareness and brand loyalty among consumers, citing their own websites as the main vehicle for reaching consumers and building loyalty.
While 52% of brand executives say social media provides an opportunity to build brand awareness amongst customers previously unreachable, opinions are divided on the marketing effect of social media: 35% say social media is making it easier to create customer loyalty, and 30% disagree that building customer loyalty has become easier because of social networking. More »
A new survey has underlined the growing importance of 
Company Profile
Replies to this question I posted on LinkedIn last week ranged from:
While brand awareness is the key brand management objective for brand marketers in 2010, most corporate brand executives believe they are better served by 