Since the World Cup kicked off on Friday, we’ve been exposed to a lot aspects of the South African culture; dances, songs, traditional clothes, etc… and among all of this, one thing is arguably more remarkable than everything else: vuvuzelas. If you’re unsure of what we mean, see our little chap above.
He’s not on his own either. Every supporter seems to have one in the stadiums across South Africa and – for them at least – it’s just another way to express enthusiasm for their teams.
However, looking at what’s been tweeted so far about these noise-machines, the nations’ fans are split. Local supporters seem to have gone mad for them. Others around the globe are not so positive.
Whatever you think, it’s clear the vuvuzela is conversational. Whether you’re for or against seems much to do with whether you’re blowing one at the top of your lungs from a SA stadium or listening to a 50,000 strong vuvuzela cacophony from your couch. Context is king.
We’re always banging on about how word of mouth affects every area of a business: from TV advertising to customer service, packaging design to internal comms, retail stores to social media presences.
Brands should even be asking how they can make their billing conversational. Don’t believe us? Watch this lovely bit of work around drink driving from OgilvyBrazil, and you might realise you’re missing a trick.
Ready to disrupt, delight and open a dialogue with your customers at every touchpoint you have? Give us a call, send an email or a tweet, or just drop in.
Heads up to on-the-ball ‘Head Riccardo Webb for spotting the video.
“On the occasion of World Water Day, BDDP Unlimited partner NGO Solidarity International, which specializes in coverage of basic needs (including water supply), has created an unprecedented public event: to better detect bystanders, the agency has devised a poster of a new genus, using water directly as a medium. A wall of water events was set in the very heart of Paris and delivered messages for one week causing the awareness of pedestrians on the damage caused by the non-potable water in the world.”
Yesterday, Molly wrote about the pros and cons of having and implementing a set of social media guidelines into your company. While this kind of policy is virtually essential to any modern day brand, the problems that arise more often than not spring out of employee reluctance to take part.
What we don’t tend to talk about is what drives this activation.
That’s where our word of mouth tracking comes into it. ‘WOMTrak‘ is a whole suite of products originally designed to provide insights and analysis to inform our ongoing activation ideas. Like I said to a number of people at Likeminds on Friday, there really is no point coming up with an amazing idea if you have no information or insights to base it on.
With all of our clients, old or new, we always advise a period of listening first. Obviously with some of our more long standing accounts, this system is already in place; constantly defining and refining our creative as well as our engagement strategies moving forward. Building in reactive and creative strategies that we can execute on a six-pence.
It’s a fantastic resource to have.
Coming back from both the Likeminds conference and the subsequent summit at Bovey Castle, I feel inspired and invigorated. Each and every practitioner we met spoke of the importance of listening first, then engaging. Be that through using something as simple as a Google Alert or a fully fledged monitoring program from a specialist system like WOMTrak; make sure you listen.
Listening will provide a mean of what your people already think of you. Once you have that, you can start researching and discovering insights… and once you have that, you can start educating your staff and your stakeholders about why this is important. Sell that in and you’re on course to begin creating informed strategies that provide useful, engaging content that will not only improve your bottom line but ultimately, improve the experience of your end user.
So remember, when it comes to WOM, if you do only one thing -
“Social Media Week conferences take place simultaneously in multiple cities around the world. The aim of each event is to advance the use and understanding of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors.”
From New York to Berlin, San Francisco to São Paulo and Toronto to London, across the globe people are coming together to ‘explore the profound impact that social media has on culture, business communications and society at large’.
There are a couple of other events going on Friday morning, including Reputation Online’s ‘Crisis Management‘ session as well as a special Social Media Week Tuttle Club. However, having seen how quickly the tickets for these events have been snapped up, we think there might be scope for one more thing..
So if you’re free and fancy joining us – you’ll be made to feel very welcome indeed.
The Social Media Week Digest does exactly what it says on the tin; by Friday morning at least some of you would have all had the chance to catchone of the aforementioned fantastic events and this end-of-the-week gathering is your opportunity to come together and share stories, anecdotes and generally catch up on some of the interesting things you’ve seen and done.
Come drink some coffee (on us) and have a chat about where we’re all headed next.
Tickets aren’t mandatory (get yours here), they just help us keep an eye on numbers etc…
See you Friday!
Thanks to ICA London for the super last minute providing of the venue, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of the place very soon.
If you’re across the channel this Thursday 4th Feb be sure to drop into the first ever Tuttle Paris – that’s an informal social media meetup for the uninitiated.
Our resident French ‘head Lilian Mahoukou is organising the relaxed networking event at Au Pere Tranquille, 16, rue Pierre Lescot,from 6.30 – 8.30pm, so it’s easy to drop in after work. Lilian tells me a diverse group of attendees have already confirmed, with specialists in SEO, Gen Y, coaching, e-business, and corporate and personal branding coming along, as well as the usual mix of bloggers, citizen journalists and just plain interesting people, so it should be a great couple of hours.
We’re pretty excited. The World Traveller Internship will give two individuals free travel around the globe for three months, uncovering the lesser-seen beauty spots the world has to offer, adding their knowledge to the existing, passionate STA Travel community online and basically having a totally once-in-a-lifetime time. This is a sdeeply social scheme, with interns recording their trips via blog, video, photo and audio across a host of social media platforms – but it’s not exclusively for the web savvy, as we’ll be helping the winners make the most of all the best and latest tools out there.
Tempted?
Rules and requirements can be found on STA Travel’s World Traveller Internship pages and you can get a taster of the vague (details are under wraps until tomorrow) yet still impressive itinerary here.
If a big bad social media adventure sounds like your thing, join us at the STA Travel Victoria store tomorrow night, Tuesday 26th Jan from 7:30. It’s an open invite so if you’d like to know more, or are already in the process of planning your application, come along and get involved. – the more the merrier.
We’re pretty excited. The World Traveller Internship will give two individuals free travel around the globe for three months, uncovering the lesser-seen beauty spots the world has to offer, adding their knowledge to the existing, passionate STA Travel community online and basically having a totally once-in-a-lifetime time. This is a sdeeply social scheme, with interns recording their trips via blog, video, photo and audio across a host of social media platforms – but it’s not exclusively for the web savvy, as we’ll be helping the winners make the most of all the best and latest tools out there.
Tempted?
Rules and requirements can be found on STA Travel’s World Traveller Internship pages and you can get a taster of the vague (details are under wraps until tomorrow) yet still impressive itinerary here.
If a big bad social media adventure sounds like your thing, join us at the STA Travel Victoria store tomorrow night, Tuesday 26th Jan from 7:30. It’s an open invite so if you’d like to know more, or are already in the process of planning your application, come along and get involved. – the more the merrier.
Yes, it’s that time of the month again – our WOM Expert group will soon be huddled over laptops across the world to discuss the regional and global landscape of social media and word of mouth.
Our upcoming session next Wednesday 13th January, 1-4pm GMT, will focus on North America – the current issues, future trends and specific cultural and geographical hallmarks of consumer advocacy for our cousins over the pond. Wherever you come from, do join us for the virtual chat and be prepared to be informed, provocative and open to other perspectives.
It’s a special session for me as our current group facilitator Sylwia will be handing over to me – so do come and say hi and help set the agenda for our idea-sharing this year.
We get platform issues if you try and register while the talk is in progress, so please subscribe to our Tangler forums now for your place in the discussion. And pop a comment below to introduce yourselves so we know who’s coming along – I look forward to meeting you!
Our resident French ‘head 
We’re pretty excited. The World Traveller Internship will give two individuals free travel around the globe for three months, uncovering the lesser-seen beauty spots the world has to offer, adding their knowledge to the existing, passionate STA Travel community online and basically having a totally once-in-a-lifetime time. This is a sdeeply social scheme, with interns recording their trips via blog, video, photo and audio across a host of social media platforms – but it’s not exclusively for the web savvy, as we’ll be helping the winners make the most of all the best and latest tools out there.
