1. Social Brands 100 Q&A: Tetley

    Drinking tea may be a fundamentally social activity, but how to replicate that experience in social spaces? For Tetley, the world’s second largest manufacturer and distributor of tea, it meant bringing back the animated characters that are the Tetley Tea Folk after a 10-year break to provide a human and emotional connection to the brand.

    Anand Gandesha, Tetley Marketing Manager, talked to us about how the brand approaches social, 2 years after the return of the Folk.

    Read more on the Headstream Blog: http://blog.headstream.com/2012/05/28/social-brands-100-qa-tetley/

    Tetley has been shortlisted in this year’s Social Brands 100. Find out the results and download the report tomorrow morning from 9am GMT at www.socialbrands100.com. Join the conversation at #sb100.

  2. Tweets on the Line: How Chiltern Railways got Social Media Right With 1.34 billion rail journeys taken in the year before March 2011, it’s fair to state that rail companies play a particularly prominent role in the lives of UK citizens. Servicing a busy route between the UK’s two biggest cities, London and Birmingham, Chiltern Railways sees social media as central to the marketing mix, but it’s also used across the business for a other reasons, building customer insight, engagement and advocacy, and for product development and customer service. Read more: http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/05/23/tweets-on-the-line-how-chiltern-railways-got-social-media-right/#ixzz1w91xtkTb

    Tweets on the Line: How Chiltern Railways got Social Media Right

    With 1.34 billion rail journeys taken in the year before March 2011, it’s fair to state that rail companies play a particularly prominent role in the lives of UK citizens.

    Servicing a busy route between the UK’s two biggest cities, London and Birmingham, Chiltern Railways sees social media as central to the marketing mix, but it’s also used across the business for a other reasons, building customer insight, engagement and advocacy, and for product development and customer service.

    Read more: http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/05/23/tweets-on-the-line-how-chiltern-railways-got-social-media-right/#ixzz1w91xtkTb

  3. Archive Dive: X is for Xbox

    ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!’

    Some say advertising can be shouty, but this takes the cake. Champagne opens with a screaming woman in the final stages of labour. This is followed by the snap of an umbilical cord as her newborn baby flies out the window and hurtles across the earth. He grows into a boy, opens his eyes, and lets out a cry that continues until he crashes into his grave an old man. The final sound is that of a beating heart and the line, ‘Life is short. Play more.’ 

    Read more on D&AD.

  4. Domino’s Pizza: How it delivers on social media

    Domino’s Pizza appeared in last year’s Social Brands 100 Top 30.  The pizza delivery company has made a name for itself for using social media in an innovative way, most recently with #LetsDoLunch, a ‘reverse auction’ on Twitter that lowered the price of a large pepperoni pizza as more people tweet about it. Interview with Multi-Media Manager Nick Dutch on The Wall


  5. giffgaff: Talking the talk in social

    This is the second in a series of follow-up interviews with last year’s SB100 brands.  I spoke to Claire Kavanagh from mobile network giffgaff about their community approach to business and what’s moved on since last year.

    Read the full post on The Wall. 

  6. first direct: a bank with social in its dna

    This interview with Amanda Brown at first direct is the first in a series of interviews with some of last year’s Social Brands 100. Read it on The Wall.

  7. Social media recruitment: good for growth but no quick fix

    According to research reported by HR Magazine, more than half of UK jobseekers use social media to assist them in job searches and young European job seekers specifically like to interact with potential employers on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. The article demonstrates that lots of brands are switching on to the power of social media in recruitment and it’s well worth a read for some good examples of how it’s being done.  
     
    Read more on Five by Five People blog.

  8. What to do with the data for ‘Brand Me’? I really care about databases.  It may not make for great dinner party conversation, but a well-maintained database has always been essential to marketers who want to understand and connect with customers.  Social media has taken this information gathering to a whole other level and I hold all kinds of data on myself now. Millions of us are going about our daily lives collecting data on all kinds of platforms that would make marketers giddy with excitement.  Read more on The Wall.  

    What to do with the data for ‘Brand Me’?

    I really care about databases.  It may not make for great dinner party conversation, but a well-maintained database has always been essential to marketers who want to understand and connect with customers.  Social media has taken this information gathering to a whole other level and I hold all kinds of data on myself now. Millions of us are going about our daily lives collecting data on all kinds of platforms that would make marketers giddy with excitement. 

    Read more on The Wall.

     

  9. Getting social at #smwldn #smwsb100 It was Social Media Week this week and hashtag heaven, so what better time to celebrate this year’s Social Brands 100 nominees? Hosted by Headstream and our data analytics partner Brandwatch, a big crowd came along to The Social (gettit?) in central London to have a drink and talk, of course, social. Read more.

    Getting social at #smwldn #smwsb100

    It was Social Media Week this week and hashtag heaven, so what better time to celebrate this year’s Social Brands 100 nominees? Hosted by Headstream and our data analytics partner Brandwatch, a big crowd came along to The Social (gettit?) in central London to have a drink and talk, of course, social. Read more.

  10. Social Brands Think Small My latest blog post, here’s a snippet, but you can read the full post on The Wall. So it’s finally happened; Facebook has filed for ‘the largest technology IPO in Wall Street history’. Everything about Facebook is immense; almost 850 million users and 2.7 billion likes and comments every day. As recently as the summer of 2008, Mark Zuckerberg was celebrating the 100 millionth user, that means 750 million people signed up in 3.5 years alone. Then there’s Twitter, hitting 500 million users any day now, not to mention Linkedin, who reported 135 million members in November 2011.  These numbers are trotted on a regular basis, but they never fail to make my eyes water. Of course, all these platforms have enormous amounts of information to share with marketers so brands aren’t exactly shouting into the wind, but in the race for likes and followers, many still do forget a few basic social principles; be authentic and relevant. That can often mean thinking small. Read more

    Social Brands Think Small

    My latest blog post, here’s a snippet, but you can read the full post on The Wall.

    So it’s finally happened; Facebook has filed for ‘the largest technology IPO in Wall Street history’. Everything about Facebook is immense; almost 850 million users and 2.7 billion likes and comments every day. As recently as the summer of 2008, Mark Zuckerberg was celebrating the 100 millionth user, that means 750 million people signed up in 3.5 years alone. Then there’s Twitter, hitting 500 million users any day now, not to mention Linkedin, who reported 135 million members in November 2011. 

    These numbers are trotted on a regular basis, but they never fail to make my eyes water. Of course, all these platforms have enormous amounts of information to share with marketers so brands aren’t exactly shouting into the wind, but in the race for likes and followers, many still do forget a few basic social principles; be authentic and relevant. That can often mean thinking small. Read more