What’s brewing

What is interesting in the findings of this research for me is the implications of the audience participation principles we see working so well in X-Factor to engagement strategies online for the brands and businesses struggling to understand the value of investing in a social media programme.

According to Neilsen, the artists that seemed to generate the most online buzz after an X factor performance are those who were discovered through the TV talent show route. Neilsen report an 87% increase in online buzz around acts who are now well established but were originally discovered via the talent show route, compared to a 47% increase in online buzz for more traditional acts. To my mind this demonstrates evidence of a very interesting ongoing loyalty and connection of audiences to the artists (or you could say brands) they feel they had a role in bringing to fame.

A good example of how providing a route for the audience to participate in a brands success can build ongoing loyalty over and beyond traditional methods, a loyalty which then has the potential to translate to ongoing commercial success.

New research published by Sysmos provides a highly illuminating view of the breakdown of Twitter usage by geography. This research covering the period from Oct to Dec 09 is the second wave of research published by the company. The first was published in Jun 09 and there are some interesting insights in terms of the evolution of Twitter usage over time and well as in the current findings.

According to the research the number one ranking country for Twitter users is the US, representing a staggering 50.9% of the total Twitter population. You could put this down to sheer volume of people in the US, however a quick compare on Internet World Stats shows that North America only represents 14.6% of the worldwide Internet users. So we are seeing a distinct skew towards the US in terms of Internet users adoption of Twitter.

However when it comes to the biggest cities on Twitter in terms of unique users London ranks no. 1, followed by LA, Sao Paulo and then New York. But when it comes to the gift of the gab on Twitter New Yorkers beat everyone else hand down – contributing the greatest volume of tweets than any other city. Some cynics may conclude that this very much reflects how things are in the offline world too ;-)

Also interesting is that according to the research Brazil has shown a huge surge in Twitter users from June to Dec 09 – rising from 2% to 6.73% of the Twitter population and now ranking as the second biggest country on Twitter. Interestingly this is more in line with overall percentage of worldwide Internet users from Latin America which is 10.1% and is in line with recent explosive growth in not only Internet but also and more importantly probably mobile phone usage in Brazil.

Will be interesting to see how these statistics evolve over time – especially from the point of view of levels of representation by country. How long will it be before the Twitter universe begins to parallel the online universe in terms of representation – or will we see some nations such as Brazil and India grow beyond their current online scale fuelled by mobile application usage of Twitter?

Great new campaign from MySpace where you can add yourself to music videos from a range of artists like 50 Cent and Florence & The Machine.

As a concept it's not new - from the Wedding Crashers viral where you could "Crash" the trailer for the film in 2005 to the campaign for Sweden TV Licensing to "Be The Hero" but what makes this one stand out is the execution.

Great production values and seamless integration of user generated content. Very slick. Helped along by great content which if you are a fan you will want to be a part of and share.

We have come a long way from Elf Yourself!

Three pages of pure sense, underpinned by a tangible understanding of the role that social media plays in modern communications, and how everyone within a company represents that company even when/if they’re not being paid to do so.

Part of the reason Coke have nailed it is that they’ve captured the whole personal/professional involvement with regard to social media in one cracking sentence:

“There’s a big difference in speaking “on behalf of the Company” and speaking “about” the Company.”

On the back of this, Cocal Cola have identified a three-tier approach to social media we’ll be seeing much more of from multinationals (or even much smaller companies) for that matter.

1. Establish the guidelines that all employees should follow with regard to their own personal use of social media. (This encompasses everyone who might speak “about” the company)
2. Identify, train and “accredit” a [smaller]* number of partly self-selecting social media spokespeople, drawn from across a company (including customer service, corporate comms and marketing). And create an internal system to join up cross-departmental activities so knowledge about who is commenting on what can transfer smoothly across the organisation
3. Establish a series of stricter guidelines for this group of “trained and accredited spokespeople”, which gives them authority to respond on behalf of the company

Also worth a watch is the interview with Andy Brown, Coke’s Head of Social Media in which he explains in an equally accessible way what they’re trying to achieve, and how.

Click here to download:

Coca Cola's social media policy.pdf (123 KB)

The battle-lines are being drawn by the soft-drinks makers (and by Unilever), both in terms of how they spend their marketing dollars to reach their customers, but also how they let their strongest advocates (staff and existing customers) tell their stories for them online. Where they lead you can bet other consumer-facing brands with previoulsy massive ad-spends will be sure to follow.

*There’s no particular reason why this number has to be smaller. Except the practicalities. For start-ups, and small businesses I’d actually argue that the more people with this authority the better…

He's right, of course. And Facebook, alongside reality-based TV shows is a big contributing factor.

But, as a society do we want this to be the case? Do we really want to allow - or even implicly/explictly encourage (young) people to voluntarily give up their "right" to privacy? I don't think we do. Or at least as a society we should think hard about how we guide young people through this maze. Yes there are benefits (as Zoe Margolis rightly identifies in today's Guardian). But there is also a downside too.

The New York Times Magazine did a fantastic piece in early 2007 on how the concept of privacy (cf being an online fame whore) is changing. It's well worth a read. This was before Facebook had really taken off over here. Before people had been turned or sacked from jobs based on their Facebook updates.

Dr Kieron O’Hara’s recent paper to the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCSSA) stating that we need to be more careful about how the concept of Privacy is changing fascinates and scares me in equal measure. Particularly after I read Rashmisinha's blog cited by Anthony Mayfield. She suggested that if Facebook were starting today the default would be "Open". Which would scare the bejuses out of some extremely tech-savvy adults, myself included.

I don't have a problem at all with organisations or brands courting publicity. Indeed, at Brew, I help them do just that. But encouraging a culture of individual celebrity (or simply accepting that personal privacy is dead), particularly by young people who are still finding their own identity may well lead to long-term problems.

In my day, playground popularity contest winners were known, of course. But nowadays popularity can actually be ranked. I'm sure schoolkids keep close tabs on how many followers they and their peers have? How many friends? How many times have their uploaded films been viewed compared to others? Who has unfriended whom, when, and why?

And I worry that young people will start to judge their own self-worth based too much on these crude indices of popularity. And that will change how they behave in ways they may not be old enough to realise they could really regret. Boastful publicity-generating photos used to be developed in Boots. Now they remain indexed on search engines forever.

As a society I worry that young people are growing up valuing fame more than they value privacy. And that Facebook is normalising it. Which scares me.

I can try and guide my kids through this. But as a society I think we should do more to guide all kids through it. Much more.

Photo used under creative commons licence, taken by Sunside on Flickr