That said opportunities like the one I have been offered recently do not come along very often, so on Monday I start at Nokia as their “Global Editor in chief” for social media. I am under no illusions about the challenges that lie ahead, both for the company and for me personally, but I have worked with Nokia for about 2 years now, as a ‘head and before, and I know the amazing underlying strengths the organisation has, I’m excited about what the social team at Nokia can achieve and looking forward to working with some very bright minds who really “get it”.

Nokia HQ courtesy of Slashgear

For those of you who are wondering: I will still be based in London, for now at least, so no Helsinki or Espoo bound relocation just yet…

Oh and if you are planning to attend Nokia World 2011 I will be there, so come and say hello!

Onwards! 

It is amazing just how big this stuff is now!

It is equally amazing how many people are now becoming scepticle, we have certainly past the blind “believe the hype” phase of social media and are into the bedding down and scepticism of said hype phase, as despite all those amazing stats above there is more scepticism about the medium than ever before… Why? Because many people have now tried and failed in social. and many “gurus” have sold lots of “snake oil” to brands and agencies alike.

We have an interesting dichotomy on our hands, on the one side we have the fact that this stuff is huge, just insanely huge, on the other hand we have a growing list of failures and scepticism and the (quite frankly unhealthy) dissmissal of the “social media expert” and “guru” across (ironically) the leading social media marketing circles. I think this is because of 3 things:

1) Accountability: It was often said in the past that “half of marketing money is wasted, if only we could tell which half”, unfortunately for some (hugely fortunately for others) it is very hard to hide from metrics in social and as much as you search for the silver lining failure is pretty easy to spot, and I don’t mean failure in the sense of a screwup on a twitter account but I mean a campaign that really didn’t work.

2) Old thinking: It’s a brave new world that needs new blood and new thinking, simple

3) Fragmentation: Facebook is huge, but it is fragmented, so is twitter, so are the myriad other networks out there, social is not as easy as other mediums in this respect, this leads to failure when combined with the above two factors, failure leads to fear, fear to retreat and retrentment, that is bad.

Solution: Accept you will fail in social just like you will probably fail in all other marketing activity at some point, not every campaign or activity or initiative will work, so just learn and move on, but look at those above stats, in the words of James Whatley on the 1000heads blog: “watch it then watch it again” ’cause this ain’t going anywhere, like it or not!

Since I have been blogging, both for coroprate brands (agencies and multi-nationals) and personally, I have come upon a really simple fact: If you want your blog to get more hits you have to produce more content, more content = more traffic, more engagement.

Obviously that content has to be of reasonable quality, but posts do not have to be long, or complex, just regular.

So that is it, next time you need to figure out “how do I get more hits on my blog” think about the volume of content your producing… This is, of course, not the only way to gain more hits and can only get you so far (you need to look at SEO, PPC, social signposting etc. too)

An obvious parody of the VW “superbowl” commercial from earlier this year and quite a clever one at that.

It made me laugh, but it didn’t make me think too much about VW’s emmission standards or stance on C02 regulations because, as one comment on YouTube puts it so bluntly: “Greenpeace need to go take a long, hard look at a Hummer”. Interesting sentiment, in fact on page 1 of the YouTube comments every one is negative, calling out Greenpeace for various things a good example: “Sure, it’s a well made little clip but it’s times like this I realise that a decent amount of donations to Greenpeace go straight to either some ad agency or a very well paid team of CGI experts. It just seems a bit too easy to rip off a clever advert when there are actually much bigger things to be fighting against. There are companies doing much much worse than just opposing a proposed CO2 reduction commitment.”

So is this a win for Greenpeace? Well it has started the conversation but generated a lot of negativity and people also seem very hung up on the fact that VW seem to have a decent environmental record, I guess that’s the power of CSR communications, maybe VW have successfully minimised the impact of this clever campaign by being so proactive with green issues generally, by marketing the “bluemotion range” well and getting messages out there like this (quote again from YouTube) “”Volkswagen’s Passat BlueTDI meets the upcoming 2014 Euro-6 emissions standards by emitting less than 80 mg/km of nitrogen oxide and 137 g/km of CO2.” I dont see what the fuss is all about. VW even invested 350 million in a single plant to reduce its Co2 emissions by 7000 tonnes a year.”

So nice work so far VW, proactive is good! But this vid still has 100k views in 1 day, and an “episode 2″ has 20k hits so you’re not out of the woods yet…

It intrigued me, as did the irreverent and amusing twitter bio, so I looked into it…

Turns out Betfair’s twitter policy is hilarious, just tweet funny stuff that is, on occasion, loosely related to world events and just say funny things like this:

And this:

Good stuff, I actually read through a lot of their feed, something I rarely do for a brand! But more than that I had a positive conversation about their brand with another follower on twitter, good work!

Now think about this: They do no reactive work, they provide no customer support or info but they do add value they make me laugh, and I, as a young man who may gamble, am a key market for them, they have got me.

Their strategy is just to have fun, be funny and appeal to their market, it works, it works well. Nice work Betfair.

Follow them here.

Courtesy of Octane Gossip

The Eagle Speedster, a £500,000 modern take on the iconic Jaguar E-Type.

Now what is interesting here, from a marketing perspective, is that a small East Sussex based company are doing this and not Jaguar themselves… And I don’t mean Jaguar making a £500k concept to prove a point I mean going down the Mini / Fiat 500 road and actually re-making the classic.

OK so am I touching on the sacrilegious here? Jag re-make the E-type? I don’t think so, it would only be sacreligous if it was crap or expensive, if it was like the original, a super sexy, chic, alternative to a prancing horse while undercutting the price it would be an insane hit! And it’s not like it would take much design effort, Eagle have done it for you, just make it! (Yes it is easier said than done, but so was the original E-Type, and they did that!)

Now for MG:

MG’s comeback car was released recently, the MG6 GT it only got a cursory mention from Clarkson and co, bad news for a comeback for the once great MG! But here is the problem: What does new MG stand for? No one knows, they are still batch building the dodgy TF and now they come out with their comeback, MG the brand formerly great for lightweight convertible sport cars, with a great racing pedigree, the brand which still (in their new ad campaign) reference the iconic Midget, so why the hell release a boring, average looking, saloon? That is not something for me to get excited about!

Instead: re-make the midget, or similar, do something sporty and different, turn some heads, make it good! Then follow up with the boring saloon that Dad buys remembering his youthful lust for the Midgetesque roadster!

I dunno, I feel the new MG is a disappointing shadow of it’s former self, I hoped the new owners would come out with a revolution, not a badged up Chinese saloon (might as well be a badged up Rover like the last 10 years?!) Jaguar are doing good at the moment the XF is awesome and the XK is pretty but the E-Type is still an opportunity!

Wouldn’t it be awesome if MG released some kick ass 2 seater roadster which looked amazing, something to rival the MX5, maybe not as quick or balanced or reliable but something so good looking and iconically MG that it took the limelight and sold some cars, even if they sold a very limited run below cost and made it super awesome, just to bring MG back into the collective consciousness as a marque!

Amazing, and there is more on their YouTube channel!

But most brands are doing it wrong, here is why:

1. How many brands do you see who stick a FB logo or twitter logo on their ATL or TV spots, OK, so I know you are there, but I don’t even have a URL, how can I find your official page (most big brands have 1000′s of “unnoficial pages, no bad thing) and by making it harder work for me you reduce the action rate!
2. So you have put up the URL but not given me a reason why I should follow, brilliant… What’s the incentive, if you want me to look at the page I better have a reason to go there, this is simple marketing in every respect!
3. The URL is hidden in the corner out of the way, brilliant lets stick some tiny FB logo on a huge tube poster, here is a great example: 
   Can you spot the logo, it is hidden in the bottom left almost below the border, brilliant!
4. No SEO or PPC, If I want to find out about a brand I probably Google it, simple really, so if you are spending all that money on FB ads and “sponsored stories” then it might also make sense to put some into Google Ads to drive traffic that way, a great, cost effective signpost, Lynx did this really well with their “Angels” campaign
5. Not doing it at all… Look, integrated marketing works, so please do this stuff, your campaigns will be more successful