coffee and pie

FrogMob is an excellent site that taps into how people come up with solutions and adapt products to fit into their needs. Using social media they run research studies, about a particular topic and gather photography and stories to describe how products are used globally.

As more brands enter the social media space and it becomes a more sophisticated channel for advertising and branding I like seeing projects like this that highlight how much these tools facilitate communication for so many different types of things.

I love the past Mob Work Bikes where they uncovered insights about bike design by closely examining bikes that people use to make a living.

Two minute film for the Dulux Lets colour project. The people in the film are not actors, they are real people who rolled up their sleeves to transform their community. I’ve already written about how much I love the project and watching this film has only increased my excitement about it.

The film was shot by multi-award winning director Adam Berg over four weeks in Brazil, France, London and India.

Lets Colour‘ is “a worldwide initiative to transform grey spaces with colourful paint”. Dulux have gathered a group of bloggers as well as some of their management team to tour the UK, France, India and Brazil painting gray spaces with bright colours.

As Contagious pointed out advertising colour in an original an impactful way is no easy task since both Sony and Apple’s campaigns – but Dulux have got an idea here that communicates across multiple channels in multiple ways. I was drawn to this for the amazing photography but there is an emotion they have tapped into by focusing on communities, change and making something better.

Let’s Colour doesn’t just sell an idea to you it makes you want to take part or at least value the people who have and appreciate the differences it has made. Most importantly you can see its real which is probably my favourite thing about the project. This project whether born from a ’social media meeting’ or just an ideas meeting is truly reflective of the way people share information.

It’s so nice to see such a huge idea carried and executed across social channels. I hate that social media is still tagged onto the end of an idea or project. Social media was born out of behaviours and how people are interacting with certain platforms. This should be taken into consideration when coming up with any idea.

As I mentioned the pictures are what drew me into the project and you can see all of these on their Flickr. The blog is full of more info on the day to day work as well as completed projects. They have a twitter account and there is a different Facebook page for each country where there are some great competitions for users to get involved with the project.

I’m looking forward to how this project will translate to sales and the everyday consumer strolling into homebase at the weekend, as well as the TV campaigns – with a documentary filmmaker involved I’m sure there is lots more to come.

What happens when you add one Facebook event, an American Apparel rummage sale and loads of East London hipsters.

Novelty facebook fan pages started popping up continuously around the time Saatchi asked members of their Summer Scholarship 2010 Facebook group to come up with a group of their own.

The two notable ones Your own Lego Man. Free and Secret London have both gone on to generate huge success with the founder of Secret London setting up her own site and Lego reportedly being involved with the Lego installation.

Around this time we also saw pages inspired by the idea -Shit London a place to discover the shittest gems of London. This weekend photos uploaded by group members have been selected for the page’s first exhibition at the The Outside World Gallery in Bethnal Green. This is a cool achievement and something lots of brands will be looking at to replicate.

I really love the French Connection rebranding and thought it was brilliant how they had extended it from store windows to their website – something still not seen often enough in other retail brands.

Their latest strategy is an interesting next step and may perhaps seem slightly off brand for their new messaging. However I like how they have taken the new site – Chatroulette, which is doing the rounds across the Web and is primarily know for men exposing their genitals and created a competition that moves away from that subject.

The messaging (below) may hint at the more explicit side of Chatroulette but the entries will have to challenge the (what feels like) default behavior, and communicate with others in a much more realistic face to face way – forcing people to explore the site and maybe utilise the positive aspects of it.

“So we’re challenging men to venture into the dirty, smelly swathes of ChatRoulette to find a woman. And seduce her. The best man wins £250 to blow at French Connection Man on a decent outfit to seduce real ladies in the real world.”

Obviously it could all fall flat on its face but I’m pretty sure being the first brand to partner with such a new and controversial site can only be good for their brand awareness.

Either way after my first experience of Chatroulette I’m not planning a second visit anytime soon but it’s a good example of fashion brands getting their hands dirty with social media.

American Apparel have nailed cosumer engagement. Their last campaign How Do You Wear American Apparel on Lookbook was a perfect example of how to talk directly to the people who love your clothes. When I browse Lookbook I’m pretty sure there is an AA item it at least every other picture. Plus their latest Best Bottom contest is genius crowd sourcing.

H&M are now getting in on the Lookbook action too.

I guess because fashion in the past has been so ingrained with sales and promotions having a two way conversation has actually taken them much longer to adopt than other industries. With London Fashion Week starting on Friday and a whole digital schedule in place it really feels like the fashion world are accepting digital and embracing social media. I think this its going to be an exciting year!

Everyone seems to be giving Mark Zuckerberg a hard time at the moment.

Like most companies that become incredibly successful and powerful in a short space of time we praise its innovation, growth and guts but inevitably sooner or later the backlash begins.

Privacy online is something i’ve wanted to write about since I took the picture above – mainly because I couldn’t understand why someone would want a person to ‘Facebook’ them. ‘Google’ yes – this will return things you have done but Facebook? Facebook is for friends right, it’s about private relationships you share with a network of people you choose to? Well maybe not for everyone plus how many friend requests do we accept from people we barely know, or like.

Zuckerberg stated that sharing is becoming the norm, and if Facebook were starting up today it would of been an open network. This struck a chord with me and reminded me of the picture I took at Southbank. People have become more open – back when Zuckerberg was starting out his friends asked him

‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’

That almost feels like an obsolete question now. Yet I remember thinking those things before I set up my first MySpace account 5 years ago. Of course some people you speak to still question this but no change is ever agreed by every single person. However the fact that so many blog posts, tweets, photos and video diaries are uploaded each day proves Zuckerbergs point. We are becoming more open and the Web, tools and developments have allowed this to happen but we still need to produce the content in the first place and hit publish. We cannot have one without the other.

Back in 2007 at university Anthony Giddens reflexive project of the self featured heavily in my dissertation about Digital Natives and their use of the Web’s tools in the future. Facebook, blogging platforms and Twitter to name a few have provided easy to use tools that facilitate conversations. These conversations start relationships, connections and build your identity. Our online and offline identities are not really that different anymore. As technological advancements have progressed we have naturally adapted to them and this has transferred to a much linear identity both on and offline.

These tools allow us to construct our identity (even if we are not consciously aware that is what we are doing) just like we use stories, clothes, friends and jobs to say something about ourselves. It just so happens that online tools are much more open. And this openness is natural to ‘digital natives’ because they don’t know any different.

And so younger people are more open. You only have to look at the huge surge in personal blogs, video diaries and something like lookbook.nu. Some might call it over sharing – sometimes it is. However its something that has happened gradually over time. Facebook changing their privacy settings reflects the current Web and provides an opportunity for them to monetize and grow.

Of course there is strategic thinking behind this move. Facebook is a business it takes up a lot of Zuckerberg’s time of course he wants to monetize just like anyone else would. If you had a successful business wouldn’t you take all the steps to remain ahead of the market, make money and stay at the top of your game? Can we blame one person and one networking tool for the openness the Web has given us? And can we criticize that person for innovating constantly?

Maybe we should give individuals more credit – we can still control our settings and share what we want with who we like. If people are really that worried about certain information being shared just don’t say it. I hate people who flood my newsfeed with hourly updates on their day – but doesn’t that just highlight Zuckerberg’s statement that people are becoming more open and willing to share?

When I got my iphone I decided taking out insurance with Carphone Warehouse’s Geek Squad was a good idea. I regretted this the moment I took mine in to be repaired and was handed a replacement Nokia handset. The thing had no wifi, no camera but I still had to pay the maximum monthly line rental whilst my iphone was sent off for 2-4 weeks. To add to my annoyance the Nokia was actually the second phone I was given my first (worse) replacement phone was broken.

After two and a half weeks I was missing my phone. I was sick of getting lost and desperate to take another picture of the sandwich I ate for lunch. The online tracker didn’t seem to be working so of course I turned to Twitter in this woeful time complaining that Carphone Warehouse are ’shit’.

I had no idea this would actually result in me getting my phone back a lot quicker than if I’d sat back and waited for the actual service I pay for. I talk clients all the time about using Twitter as a customer service tool but I’d never experienced it first hand.

I received a reply from @stuartcarphone the next day asking me to check the online tracker

Which of course I has been checking (I was still at stage one out of five) So @stuartcarphone asked me to email all my details.

Turns out the tracker was down and my phone actually was in the store even though I was supposed to receive email notification when it arrived. I think its great that Twitter is picking up on these things and I love that companies are willing to spend resource on this type of customer engagement. Its just odd that traditional forms of customer satisfaction are still being neglected.

Big thank you to @stuartcarphone and @becksatcarphone

Yahoo’s new advertising campaign kinda reminds me of this

Don’t get me wrong their new advert is a beautifully shot (although it could be for a mobile phone company, airline or any other brand, until the end frame) and their billboards are pretty eye catching (although I am biased to big words) but It seems to me at least that they missed the part where they tell us why we should be using Yahoo.

As far as I can tell, other than change their logo to purple plaster it all over flickr and buy every available billboard on the London underground the services they actually provide users are exactly the same.

Within this $100 Million budget it seems no one thought it was important to tell users what has (if anything) changed, improved or developed. Or how any of their services actually make it more about Y!ou

It’s all about You. Wow Yahoo thanks for sharing that worst kept secret. Surely spending $100 Million developing your tools would have been more beneficial way to penetrate the market share further. Or maybe even telling us why and demonstrating the usefulness of your tools.