Brands are being increasingly successful in social media by using humorous mascots, according to the WSJ. We’ve seen plenty of evidence of that in the UK with Dulux recently reinstating its dog and how brands as diverse as Burger King’s “The King”, Compare the Market (Meerkat) and Go Compare with its opera-singing mascot, Gio Compario, have used them.

The report says that ad executives believe consumers on Facebook are more likely to bond with a character than the traditional company page on the social-media website pumping out company and product news.

The piece cites US brands such as eBay-owned ticket-resale website StubHub, which uses a 25-foot-high animatroni tree, insurance firm Progressive with a sales agent called Flo (played by comedienne Stephanie Courtney, Spam with Sir Can A-Lot,  Diageo with its live action Captain Morgan rum pirate not to mention the Old Spice guy and Geico’s popular talking gecko.

“Consumers are less likely to have a conversation with a logo or a PR guy on social media,” said Jeff Charney, chief marketing officer for auto insurer Progressive Corp. Since 2008, Progressive’s TV ads have centered on a perky sales clerk named Flo, who touts the insurer’s rates. She now has 3.5 million fans on Facebook, where she posts comments about new Progressive products.

Characters also offer a softer way to sell a product, which is important on social media where executives fear that blatant selling or promotion can turn people off.

“You can put fairly bald product benefits into the mouth of a mascot and it doesn’t come off as hard sell,” said Parker Channon, partner at Duncan/Channon, a San Francisco ad firm that crafted the StubHub pitch, from the WSJ.

More at: http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/03/26/does-your-brand-need-a-mascot-to-be-successful-in-social-media/

Whether on a smartphone, tablet or laptop, using a second screen to tweet about TV is becoming a common occurrence - and it is called “chatterboxing”.

According to a survey conducted byTV Licensing, those aged 18-24 are the biggest uptakers of chatterboxing, with 46% of people who use social media taking part.

But the 25-34s are catching up - with 43% now chatterboxing, and in the 35-44 age range, 31% are already using second screens.

Communications manager Dan McLoughlin has been chatterboxing for months.

He said: “It makes TV such a social experience. We don’t often sit with family or friends to watch TV any more, so it makes it social.

The way that people choose to entertain themselves now, is not just listening to the radio during the day and watching the television in the evening. It’s far more about getting their news online, some on television, talking about it, recording it.

Emma Mulqueeny, from developer network Rewired State

“On these panel shows like X Factor or Strictly (Come Dancing), I value the comments of my friends and other people tweeting - and celebrities - more than the actual people on the panels themselves.

“I’m more excited by what happens on Twitter than what’s on the programme itself.”

Broadcasters are getting wise to this. They have realised if many people are tweeting about a programme while it is on air, more people will read about it, then tune in.

Social TV applications have been developed specifically for second screens.

On apps like Zeebox, Miso or Getglue you can tweet next to a live TV feed.

This is where money can be made because some of these apps have “click to buy” options, so users can directly purchase products advertised on TV.

Emma Mulqueeny, from developer networkRewired State,said: “With adverts, people can now pause and fast-forward.

“So advertising through television needs to become more clever and more directive marketing, bearing in mind what people are talking about.

“It’s difficult to guess what this is going to be like in two or even three years’ time.

More at: http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/16189017

More at: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/9342-peugeot-uses-pinterest-to-launch-puzzle-competition

Peugeot Panama has launched a Pinterest-based competition that asks people to complete puzzles by repinning images of its cars.

Last week the brand created several boards depicting different models with pieces missing.

People can search for and find these pieces, pin them on their own boards and share it with Peugeot. The first five people to complete their boards win prizes.

Though a visit to the brand’sPinterest pageleaves you somewhat confused at first, since several boards have been used as placeholders – separating the cars into different price brackets.

One such board is titled ‘Starting at 35,000us’ and is toally blank, with no content pinned. It’s an interesting way to use the space, but isn’t immediately obvious.

On the bottom row (on our screens at least, see below) – the first four board titles are used to explain the contest, with another placeholder then showing the ‘contest boards’.

People are asked to click any board to find out where to look, which is explained as follows:

This is a 5 piece puzzle of a Peugeot 3008, as you can see there are 4 pieces missing. Look for them in our website (peugeot.com.pa) or in our Facebook fan page (www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1797346790), pin them in your own board and share it with us. The first 5 people to complete their boards win!”

Using boards as placeholders is certainly one of the most creative uses of Pinterest we’ve seen so far, but sadly it’s overshadowed by the fact that the puzzle itself isn’t very clear.

It’s difficult to work out how you’re supposed to get involved, and even the brand itself has had to step in to inform a participant that the goalposts had been changed:

Hi Julia!, thank you for participating in the Peugeot Puzzle Contest, sadly as you may know, Pinterest changed our layout so we were forced to adapt the contest again. Please feel free to leave your board and start pinning again. Best Luck!”

That said, Peugeot Panama uses a conversational tone in its outreach above and is trying something new - so should be applauded for doing so.

However, it might transpire that a simpler competition, with mechanics that are easier to understand, might be more successful in driving participation in the long run.

Imagine standing at the Eiffel Tower and being able to see messages and videos overlaid through your smartphone from all visitors who have come before you.

A new app called Wallit combines augmented reality, a virtual view of the real world that can be extended with graphics and other content, with a socialexperience.

It allows users to post and view content atvirtual wallsin popular places, tourist attractions such asthe Eiffel Tower, stadiums and stores.

“Think of a virtual wall on the face ofthe Golden Gate Bridgefrom one end to the other where people can leave sentiments, photos, movies and even audio that are persistent at that location, even though the people who generate the content constantly keep changing,” said Veysel Berk, the founder of Wallit.

The goal, he said, is to record a cumulative, human experience at a location that exhibits the character of a place over time.

“We wanted to move the physical experience of a public wall that everyone can see content on and move it into digital and virtual life,” he explained.

To maintain the quality of content posted to the app users cannot create their own wall, which ensures there is only one wall for a place, producing a common experience for visitors. Content must also be generated and posted from the physical place where the virtual wall is located.

More at: http://news.yahoo.com/app-leaving-virtual-mark-physical-places-051821927.html

Graphic available From: http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/17/thumb-sxsw/?

Every year, before, during, and after South by Southwest, everyone’s eager declare someone the winner of the conference. Then comes the inevitable backlash, with questions about whether Popular App X will ever catch on with “regular people” — or if it’s just useful to techies who are constantly checking their iPhones in search of the next party.

For the second year in a row, mobile Q&A app Thumb (formerly known as Opinionaided) is offering its own take. It made a list of the apps that seemed to be getting buzz at the conference, then polled its users on whether they actually used the apps. The results (there were 4,700 responses total, with at least 220 for each question) are being pitched as an answer to the question, “Which SXSW Apps Do Real Americans Actually Use?”

Now, you could make a list of caveats to the results that’s longer than this post. For starters: Do we really think Thumb’s userbase is fully representative of “Real Americans”? And doesn’t the survey’s definition of “SXSW App” seem a bit arbitrary? But I have to admit, I was still curious about the results, so here they are. The most-used app seems to be Instagram (22 percent of respondents said they used it), followed by Spotify (14 percent), Waze (12 percent), and Foursquare (12 percent). Highlight, the app that many predicted would be this year’s big hit, was used by 5 percent of respondents.

Instagram’s victory is no surprise, given the rapid growth the company announced on-stage at SXSW. But if you want to argue about winners, it’s too bad Thumb didn’t ask about the Mophie juice pack.

Now that social curation site Pinterest has become the hot-new social thing, with loads of traffic and highly addicted community, it seems to be time for spammers to take advantage of its traffic and intense virality.

Earlier this evening, some kind of spam-exploit injected  javascript code that started replacing many Pinterest photos with ads for Best Buy. (see photo.) The actions resulted in disgruntled users blaming Pinterest. A recent study claimed that Pinterest was referring more traffic on the web.

Pinterest is now driving more referral traffic on the web than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn — combined. That’s according to Shareaholic’s January 2012 referral trafficreport, which is based on aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers that reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors each month.

In the era of social, what is amazing is how quickly the spam attacks can spread and have an impact. I sincerely hope Pinterest has brought this under control. I for one, am rooting for that hot little company.

More at: http://gigaom.com/2012/03/17/and-now-spammers-have-discovered-pinterest-too-pinterest-comes-under-spam-attack/

Since women turn to online sources for information during critical times in the purchase decision process, marketers might benefit from knowing that 35% turn to sources at the beginning of the process and 42% at the end to narrow their choices, according to BlogHer’s Fifth Annual Women and Social Media study.

The study identifies emerging platforms that women use to gain information about products and services. It also traces the connection to specific media channels and analyzes the influence of each on purchase behavior.

Seventy-seven percent of women use Facebook for fun, while 87% turn to Facebook to remain up to date with with family. More than 61% of active blog readers admit to making purchases based on a blog recommendation, nearly double the rate of Facebook and Twitter active users — 33% and 31% — respectively.

Purchase conversion among the BlogHer community was 87%.

While Facebook ranks the highest for fun and keeping up with friends and family, blogs rank the highest in learning about new products and research recommendations that can turn into purchase decisions. Some 41% seek out blogs to learn about new products, 39% look for product recommendations, and 36% use blogs to make purchase decisions.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/170164/blogs-influence-womens-shopping-experience.html#ixzz1pHNJnqul

Pinterest is planning to release redesigned profiles this week, according to CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann.

“I’m so excited about it,” said Silbermann (pictured, left), who spoke at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday. “We wanted to make it more beautiful … to make your profile different in kind than the profile you have on Facebook.”

Silbermann emphasized new discoverability features in the redesign, saying he and his team wanted to make it easier for users to stumble upon other like-minded users, and highlight the people their connections are repinning images from.

He also said the team is working on expanding the number of things users can pin, including video. Soon, people will be able to pin from Vimeo, Hulu and Netflix, among others. And, as was revealed earlier this week,an iPad app — as well as a public API — are also in the works.

At the beginning of the interview, Silbermann spoke of his inspiration for Pinterest, saying it was a project he always wanted to build. “I collected insects, I collected stamps,” he recalled. “I was obsessed with this idea that what you collect says something about who you are.”

He also talked about the site’s original design. “We labored over that grid,” he said. “There were literally dozens of that which were fully coded. We felt like, if your collectios didn’t look awesome, if they weren’t beautiful, why would anyone spend the time to build them?”

More at: http://mashable.com/2012/03/13/pinterest-redesign-api/

Pinterest’s potential isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. But if you’re a digital manager, you need a clear point of view on this for those you advise.

Yes, there’s hype, butPinterestis the front edge of at least two important digital marketing trends.

This is the first in a series of three posts taking a strategic view of what’s shaping-up to be 2012’s breakthrough new social network.

What’s Pinterest?

Pinterest, in case you haven’t heard of it, isTumblr with some different features. Like Tumblr, it allows you to post your own stuff, as well as stuff you find around the internet, with the click of a button.

Where Tumblr is a blog variant, Pinterest lets you set up sub-blogs built around a particular interest or topic. So you can post all thecute pictures of pugson one board and all the picturesabout the economyon another. It also lets you search everyone else’s boards easily.

That’s really about it. One friend described it as “Delicious for pictures”. Of course, delicious is text-driven and used by guys, while Pinterest is a scrapbook designed to drive relentless word-of-mouth referrals among women and apparently, Silicon Valley investors.

The size of Pinterest’s splash

So why is there so much buzz around this? The numbers: The site beta-launched in March 2010 and is still invite-only.

Despite this, the user base surpassed 10m in December, and according to Google DoubleClick, now has 21m worldwide unique visitors per month.

Forrester analyst Darika Ahrens sums up Pinterest’s allure below:

Pinterest is well known for having a demographic of 18-34-year-old, upper-income women from the Midwest - if that’s not who you sell to, then Pinterest may not be for you,’’ she said. “I’d ask, can you afford to be playing with pretty pictures when there are other, more urgent, interactive marketing priorities?’

Of course, as women make a huge range of purchase decisions for themselves and others (think travel, health care, home goods, food) having first-mover advertage can be an attractive proposition to many brands.

One of the things I appreciate about Pinterest is who uses it. When I look at the people I’m connected to on Google+, most of the posts I see are from a small number of tech-savvy ‘early adopter’ social media windbags.

They post a lot. But I don’t see ordinary people on G+. Not as they are on Facebook, and Pinterest. There are many more ordinary people in this world. Unlike G+ and Twitter, Pinterest didn’t have to jump a chasm to get to a majority market, its where they started.

And Pinterest is easy to use. Lots of people don’t get Twitter, or the value of an unstructured stream of 140 character utterances. But organizing collections of inspiring images is a natural, even reflexive task. Its social media, but with only the need to curate images you like. That’s a low barrier to participation.

The social media hype cycle is suggesting the solar system has a new axis called Pinterest. Is it wrong?

• SJ Mercury News: Pinterest, not Facebook, is Silicon Valley’s hottest social network. (Guess it’s too late to get in on Facebooks’s IPO.)
• CNBC: “He credits the fast-growing site Pinterest for amplifying his online sales to 50 percent of his current business. On the site, he can let his art speak for itself.” (Was it speaking for someone else on another site?)
• Tire Review (not making that up):Is Pinterest of Any Interest for the Tire Industry?
  
• There’s already a service whichclaims to analyze one’s influencethrough Pinterest.
• Heck, the U.S. Army has evenput out a manual on using the site. (File under: You know you have too much money when…)

Is Pinterest for real?

This just has the feel ofColor– remember Color? Less than a year ago itscored $41m of investmentfor its photo-sharing app from Sequoia and Bain Capital. And in social media it was everywhere — for all of two weeks.

Then everyone forgot about it after realizing its business model was the classic “Make something cool and hope Google buys it.” (And believe me, I have nothing against that business model. All offers cheerfully considered, Mr. Brin.)

More at: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/9290-what-is-pinterest-and-why-should-anyone-care

Fact: Pinning causes a significant drop in testosterone. Well, not really, but that’s what newly launched social bookmarking site MANteresting would have you believe.

The “Pinterest alternative for men” replaces pinning with nailing (don’t you feel more manly already?) and doesn’t require sissy invites to get started. Go ahead, fellers, nail the crap out of bacon recipes, powertools, and Chuck Norris words of wisdom.

Start nailing at MANteresting.