eCommerce #6: The Scary Power of Activists, and the Law
Consumers are learning fast, that for the first time in history they hold an awesome amount of power. It’s a reversal. Traditionally powerful organisations that are used to manipulating the public (parliaments, news organisations, retail companies, advertising agencies) and others that rely on a certain aloofness (government bureaucracies, universities) are still waking up to this [...]
How to Activate Twitter’s New Widget and Cover Photo
It’s been months since Twitter have blessed the social media community with new material. Now its latest additions give brands an extra boost by allowing users to create widgets that can be embedded onto websites as well as a miniature cover photo, similar to Facebook’s Timeline that was launched earlier this year. While not many [...]
How NASA turned tech-talk into a successful social personality
These days the boring and dry corporate spiel doesn’t quite fit in with social media culture. However, the recent Mars expedition proved to us how NASA’s social media marketing team were able to translate dry technical jargon into an entertaining and witty social media personality… with a touch of curiosity, Martian style. How they did it [...]
How McDonald’s solved a crisis by changing a hashtag.
McDonald’s recently published a Twitter campaign with #meetthefarmers as the hashtag. It went well. Then they added two tweets with a hashtag, #McDStories, which begged a more cynical audience. As a result, McDonalds started getting hammered with negatives. Acting quickly, McDonalds removed #McDStories, but kept #MeetTheFarmers.The change in the tone of tweet responses was instant [...]
QANTAS and McDonalds: Making a hash of hashtags?
We’ve been asked the following question by Influencing PR: How can PRs successfully use Twitter hashtags? And if it backfires in some way, how can you recover? This is after McDonalds stuffed up a Twitter hashtag stunt earlier in the week, similar to the QANTAS mess up last year. To the first question, 3 points below: * Be [...]
Twitter bungle: Microsoft apologises for Winehouse tweet
Microsoft has apologised for a ‘tweet’ that has been blasted for seeming like a blatant effort to cash in on the death of 27-year-old British singer Amy Winehouse. ‘Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse ‘download’ tweet seemed purely commercially motivated,’ Microsoft UK PR said at a ‘tweetbox360′ account at microblogging service Twitter. ‘Far [...]
