The email to me cautioned “Be careful what you tweet” and linked to Chrysler’s recent snafu, in which an employee of an agency hired by the automaker mistakenly posted an obscene tweet to Chrysler’s official Twitter feed. The employee was stuck in traffic and meant to send it to his personal account. Instead, it went to Chrysler’s Twitter feed and cost him his job and his agency the Chrysler account.
That story, and a few others that have made the news [...]

It has been a while since we’ve heard people talk about “the death of advertising.” A few years back, the birth of social media and interactive marketing had ad watchers sounding the death knell, but we now know that although advertising (and media in general) has changed, the ad biz has certainly not disappeared—and is not going to.
But what is emerging and shaking things up is a new creative class of people who might not necessarily work within our industry [...]

It is time for another Week in Social Media. As always, let’s start with some news from the world’s largest social network. Facebook now offers impressions and feedback stats to all admins. The Next Web has an article with suggestions on how to get the most out of it. Just one final, quick note on the social network behemoth: Facebook is actually trademarking “face,” if you can believe it. (Considering the omnipotence of the platform, we bet you can.)
And then [...]

“I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.” —Walt Disney (1901-1966)
With advertising, people learn what a person, a brand, a service or a product is and has to offer. I don’t think there is any better way to teach, raise awareness and sales than entertaining. Beyond direct marketing, print and online ads, commercials or product placements, one of the best ways to reach your audience and engage it on the [...]

There always used to be a difference between the way us “Brits” travel and communicate. In many cases as we travelled the world, it wouldn’t have been unsurprising to hear us being described as reserved and somewhat closed in our approach to new people and cultures.
In fact, I can remember one such event in recent times, when I went on a training course in California and was asked to sit in a circle with a group of people I’d known [...]

More digital. That’s how a plurality of millennials around the world described themselves compared with their parents’ generation in Euro RSCG’s latest global survey. Tellingly, but not too surprisingly, it’s also how a plurality of that older group distinguished the two generations, with millennials’ greater use of digital technology as the most significant distinguishing factor. Euro RSCG surveyed 2,500 millennials and 500 people aged 40 to 55, split equally between men and women and among these five countries: China, France, [...]

“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.” —David Ogilvy (1911–1999)

It’s a fact that brands can’t be manipulative or overpromising anymore, at the risk of losing credibility and spending a huge amount of money to get back on their feet. It’s a good thing, as they now have to challenge and re-create themselves, finding new ways to leverage based on authenticity, trust and listening, to engage people and raise [...]

After one week of rest, it’s time to face again the latest facts and news in the social media world, illustrated with a collection of relevant links shared by Baptiste Limb and me.
Let’s first take a look on the European side. Royal Pingdom’s blog post “State of the Internet in Europe” impresses with interesting facts and figures: Europe has more than 475 million Internet users, which is almost one-quarter of the world’s Internet users, with Germany, Russia and the U.K. in the [...]

Here we go again: “The Week in Social Media” with Baptiste Limb and me.
As with last week, let’s focus on customers in the first part of this blog post. Most times, customers are the target group for social media activities. And what do consumers want? This is one of the questions we have to face every day while working on social media projects. The title of the WebProNews post Consumers Want Brands to Interact with Facebook and Twitter, about a [...]

Time for more social media and Internet news! This time, we’ve got a mixture of links from Baptiste Limb and me.

Privacy setting, regulations, do’s and don’ts—they’re all things you normally don’t like to think about when talking about social media, because social media needs to be quick and efficient. But these topics are becoming more and more important to Internet [...]