Social Media promotion of ‘The Hangover’

Daemon Digital is helping to promote the Warner Home Video Blu-ray, DVD and On Demand release of the hit film, The Hangover. The campaign, which launched at the start of November, employs a highly targeted social media strategy to encourage people to interact with the film and its characters and ignite interest in the home release of one of the year’s most popular comedies.

A competition to win an all expenses paid trip to Las Vegas will be the centrepiece of the campaign; however Daemon recommended a supporting strategy which would drive a high number of entrants as well as importantly encouraging entrants to engage with the storyline of the film and therefore start conversations with the brand.

Entrants to the competition are invited to upload their funniest party photo to a dedicated page on Facebook – in creative costumes, striking poses and pulling faces that could only be captured in a split second; essentially doing things that make others laugh out loud, a la The Hangover!

The specific promotion of the campaign involves seeding invitational content through social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook news feeds, as well as creating a dedicated Facebook page with backgrounds and avatars in the style of the film and its characters.

The campaign results will be judged using traditional traffic based statistics together with an evaluation of the quality of conversations and interactions generated. Thus far, three weeks into the promotion, the Facebook page has over 11,200 fans.

You can enter the competition by visiting: www.facebook.com/hangovermovie

Fiery Sydney sunset sparks social media success

With the youth market already contributing 37% of international visitor arrivals in New South Wales, Tourism NSW were keen to further encourage young travellers to visit Sydney and extend their stay.

Acknowledging word of mouth as an effective channel, they recognised a need to generate content containing a balance of information, opinion and entertainment which would position Sydney as a unique destination. By engaging social networks through defensive and then offensive strategic communications the @sydney_sider Twitter account was established to promote key messages regarding Sydney and react to discussions, comments and questions as they arise.

On 16th July 2009 the setting sun caught the attention of Sydneysiders which was reflected through the Twitter Stream. As an established account @sydney_sider was able to leverage existing followers to encourage Sydneysiders to tweet comments and photos of the natural spectacle.

The Twitter stream for “Sydney” swelled with keywords “sky” and “sunset” with descriptions including best, beautiful and love. Creating the hashtag #sydneysunset, @sydney_sider was able to direct traffic to the stream of positive sentiments and images which were retweeted and shared creating 107,274 impressions.

This user generated content was also used to create a post on the Sydneysider blog, earning high Google rankings for the query “Sydney sunset” and an increase in interactions on the Tourism NSW managed Facebook page.

By reacting immediately @sydney_sider was able to take the organic conversation around a natural phenomenon and increase the presence of Sydney in the Twitter stream, reaching 66,795 people in 191 aggregated tweets.

Daemon Digital Case Study_Sydney Sunset

Can you ease into Social Media?

I’ve been reading with interest the reactions to companies who have stumbled in the social arena. In particular on blogs outlining Habitat UK’s hashtag spam, those commenting reeled at the idea of having an intern execute such a highly visible part of the communications strategy. And yet at the same time there is disbelief around the policies in place for US Marines, US Open competitors and on game day for the NFL.

Closer to home, Mat Rogers tweeted his way into trouble with the NRL and at the Social Media Summit in Melbourne the heavily government based audience continually expressed concern at trying to have a two way conversation when it takes forever to get copy approved.

While contemplating whether companies should hire, outsource or DIY their social media strategy, JD Rucker states “having a poorly run social media strategy is worse than not having one at all”. At the same time Nancy Williams is adamant (as I’m sure many of you are): social media without conversation isn’t social media.

When it comes to sports and politics, the consequences of a social media stumble can mean more then just crisis communications. (And of all people to stumble, sportsmen and the public service seem to be the very best at it and I doubt your clear/strict/enforced social media policy is going to change that much.) This is based on rules and regulations set in stone long before the rise of blogs and Twitter.

So while those involved push for changes to allow a more open channel of communication, will we (the public, fans, advocates, constituents, lookers-on, social media mavens) allow them to approach the medium with baby steps? If they won’t let us comment, will we share their content? If they won’t publish our feedback, will we give them our opinion? If they can’t answer our questions, will we seek out (and trust) their advocates instead?

Original post by http://mab397.wordpress.com

The best offence is a good defence

So you know what you want to achieve with Social Media. You’ve drafted your strategy document and you’re ready to press the go button. So what next, how do you actually engage with an audience using Social Media? It sounds great and you’re sure it’s exactly what your organisation needs, but how do you actually get it done?

If you want to engage your audience in a conversation and start relationships through the use of Social Media, you have to do the hard yards first and build a credible, defensible reputation in the space on which to build more targeted message based campaigns.

In simple terms, building the credibility of your organisation, or your products or services is easiest done by getting your hands dirty. You don’t have to start and or write your own blog (although you could), but you should comment on others where your comments add value or demonstrate expertise.

If you see a value in micro blogging, don’t ignore replies you receive and actively search out questions that you can answer. Search through existing content, on for example, You Tube or Flickr and add commentary or thoughts that substantiate your proposition.

Join social networks in Facebook, My Space or Bebo as appropriate and create an active profile by engaging with your fellow members or fans. And most of all, represent your organisation, product or service honestly, openly and realistically to enhance your reputation.

A three legged horse in a dog show

Twitter has hit the headlines and become the social media phenomena of the moment. From Barack Obama to Britney Spears, people are capitalising on its ability to publish messages to the masses in 140 characters or less. It only takes seconds to write and seconds to read. But what relevance does this new platform have for business and how are organisations cashing in on the opportunities?

Among many organisations Twitter seems to have an unjustified reputation as a service for socially inept teenagers. Yet properly used and effectively targeted, Twitter can add significant value to most organisations’ marketing and communications strategies.

Many organisations will take the approach that they will wait and see how micro blogging develops before they get involved. These same organisations and individuals within them said the same thing about social networking (in fact probably still are) and almost certainly the web before that.

The simple fact is that the speed of adoption and change in this space is such that most organisations cannot afford to risk not getting involved.

More information at http://tinyurl.com/c4dl87

Australian Twitter use hits all-time high

Use of the micro-blogging service Twitter service in Australia hit an all-time high for the week ending 10 January 2009, increasing year-on-year in web visits by 517.9% for that week compared with the same week in the previous year.

While corporate take up is slower in Australia than in the US the service offers the same advantages to organisations here which are keen to communicate short messages to a time poor audience.

A SledgeYammer blow?

In an update to yesterday’s Yammer post, the enterprise version of Twitter announced the release of new hosted version of the software allowing organisation’s to install it with their firewall which should fully remove any ITC concerns with regards to the security of the posts.

Stop, Yammertime

You will most likely already be aware of Twitter, but just in case you’re not, Twitter is a micro-blogging social network that allows its users to send and read other users' updates. Each blog posting, or Tweet, can only be a maximum of 140 characters long. They are swift, short, sharp updates of what’s new, what’s happening or in many cases, simply what’s trivial and pointless.

Tweets are displayed on a user's profile page and delivered to other users who have specifically signed up to receive them. The service works by choosing people you want to ‘follow’ so you view their messages and have people ‘follow’ you in return, so they receive your updates.

This can certainly be trivial, but it doesn’t have to be and there are some great examples of organisations which are driving social media strategies using Twitter. Daemon Digital has recommended the use of Twitter to a number of organisations as part of a wider strategy and for more information see the following post on Mashable http://mashable.com/2009/01/21/best-twitter-brands

Taking this concept further and inside an organisation is Yammer – http://www.yammer.com/ – an enterprise version of Twitter which excludes any user without a specific enterprise’s email suffix, for example @daemongroup.com to join any given feed. This creates a very simple tool through which colleagues can update one another more securely with items of information that are useful but not worthy of a newsletter style article.

What’s so effective about this is that useful information can be communicated, for example “We had a great meeting with XYZ Co.” and dialogue can be created, for example, “I have a great idea for XYZ Co. does anyone have a contact there?” intra-day and across an organisation without waiting for the company update.

It feels as though this type of internal communication, which is fast, timely and cost effective, is more likely to be read than the traditional email or newsletter update, if for no better reason than it’s short and actually adds value.

And lest we forget, in the immortal words of MC Yammer (sic)

Break it Down
Stop, Yammertime.