Facebook promotions guidelines - and getting around them.

Late last year, Facebook announced new regulations on how brands could run competitions or “sweepstakes” through the site.
Within these promotion guidelines, there is a clause which states that:
You cannot: Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by becoming a fan of your Page.
Which was a bit of a pain for agencies and brands who saw [...]

Tourism Australia lets spoof sites live on

A great bit of grown up public relations from Tourism Australia.
On the eve of the launch of a major new campaign, a couple of spoof sites popped up parodying the campaign’s central idea. (Some of the content is very funny.)
Going by online reports, Tourism Australia initially panicked, but their reaction since has been mature [...]

Because every brand needs a World Cup campaign

It’s World Cup year so the football related campaigns are difficult to avoid - and usually not very interesting.
Here’s a rolling list of the World Cup tie ins that have appeared in the past few weeks. No doubt many more to come.
Visa - Life flows better with Visa
A fat man runs to South Africa. Looks lovely and [...]

Nissan Cube iPhone concept

I think this comes from some guys at ad school in Miami. It covers the two current must-haves for anyone pitching a digital campaign: Facebook connectivity and an iPhone application. If they’d managed to get in augmented reality and Twitter they’d have had a full house. Still, it’s a nicely executed idea.

Augmented Hyper Reality

A very cool student architectural project.

Is the Mag+ the future for magazine reading?

I came across this the morning after the super-hyped launch of the iPad.
The Mag+ is a thoughtful concept for the digital future of magazines. The guys behind it have kept as true as they can to the unique experiences of magazine reading: it’s all about browsing and skimming.  So much so that there isn’t an [...]

Haiti hoaxers and Facebook breast cancer opportunism

Nothing like a natural disaster or charitable cause to get the hoaxers and cynical marketers active.
This patently stupid status update is spreading across Facebook:
This status is being tracked, the owners of facebook have confirmed they will send $1 to the rescue fund for the Haiti earthquake disaster for every time this is cut and paste [...]

Social media stereotypes: you are what you share on

A fun piece of research from Prospect Magazine has concluded that UK twitter users are mostly liberal bleeding heart environmentalists that hate the Daily Mail.
It hasn’t really surprised anyone who has followed the various scandals which have recently spread across twitter: their consistent element has been a desire to put a boot into the right wing [...]

Twitter spam from motelrocks - how not to do social media marketing

So last week I got tweeted by someone called fashionlover090.
“I used to love asos! Have you discovered Motelrocks yet? They have 20% off with code: xxxx. Check it out!!!”
Thanks!!!
I hadn’t discovered MotelRocks; what a thoughtful suggestion from… erm, who are you?
No shock to see that fashionlover090 is a spammer targeting twitter followers of rival (and [...]

Eleven examples of Facebook fan pages for brands

As Facebook passes the 300 million user mark, it’s becoming an increasingly important channel for brands looking to communicate and connect with people.
Facebook Fan Pages are a great way for companies to manage this communications and the smart ones are doing really interesting experiments here.  Below, I’ve looked at 11 brands which are playing around, with different levels of [...]