Today I found myself in the opulent surroundings of Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel for a breakfast seminar, run by Precedent, on creating dynamite campaigns. The following are some of my notes.
The seminar was lead by John Campbell and Mark Baillie, and John began by considering the good, the bad and the ugly. Examples of good campaigns included:
Coca-Cola’s 80s/90s “Can’t Beat the Feeling” adverts – a tune that many of us still recognise today and an excellent example of strong branding.
The University of Birmingham’s Circle of Influence campaign to raise £60 million. Astonishingly, they’ve already reached the £50m mark, combining online strategies with a more traditional print campaign.
Drinkaware’s drink diary, which allows you to monitor your drinking and compare with friends, adding a social element to the mix. You can even download a phone app. I couldn’t help thinking this could backfire though – imagine people using the diary to compare how much they could drink in a week and actually trying to beat each other!
Volkswagen’s Fun Theory website, featuring various viral videos aimed at making people change their behaviour for the better:
John notes that common factors to all of these successes were creativity and innovation.
Tonight I went along to the Informatics Forum in Edinburgh to listen to an inspiring talk by Euan Semple on how social media can make organisations more effective. I furiously scribbled reams of notes on a few scraps of paper and have reconstructed them here as best I could. Apologies to Euan if I have misquoted or misinterpreted any of his points. The talk was organised by the Edinburgh branch of the British Computer Society.
During Euan’s time at the BBC, he pioneered the use of weblogs, wikis and online forums to enable staff to work more collaboratively. Now an independent advisor on social computing, his insights help bring a clarity of thought to what is, for many, a brave new world.
Those of you who read my overview of accessibility and social media back in June know that I spoke about the subject at the ScotWeb2 unconference. Liz Ayzan, from LGEO Research, has kindly posted a section of my talk to YouTube (also available via Liz’s blog post about the event). I thought (in keeping with the very theme of the talk) that I should offer a text alternative of that video. A full summary of the talk can still be found on my original overview (as linked above).
My presentation at ScotWeb2 - photo courtesy of Jadu
This post explores some of the issues that I plan to discuss with attendees at tomorrow’s ScotWeb2 event in Edinburgh, regarding the current state of accessibility on Social Media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. I hope to have some interesting feedback to post here after tomorrow, so for now here’s an overview of the subject. I’ve also thrown in a few open questions to kick-start the discussion.
Barely a week goes past without another news story about some hapless individual getting into trouble as a result of Social Media. Accordingly I’ve decided to keep a record of some of these tales of woe. See the list of Social Media gaffes
I’ve recently been made aware of a really interesting project that Edinburgh Council’s libraries service has been involved in. It’s a bold venture into Web 2.0 waters, under the umbrella brand of Tales of One City.
The whole thing is brought together by a public page on Netvibes (a personalised web portal, similar to iGoogle). You can find it at www.netvibes.com/talesofonecity.
On Thursday 16th April, various public sector web types converged upon the Scotsman Hotel on Edinburgh’s North Bridge for a Web 2.0 event, hosted by The Gate.
The day was an interesting and varied one, mixing high-level summaries of web 2.0 technologies with plenty of real-world examples and discussions of the opportunities, and challenges, presented by this brave new(ish) world.
