AIMIA Social Media (Bandwagon) Awards

Bandwagon – AIMIA’s (Australian Interactive Media Association)  term for social media, not mine, never refuted or retracted. Ah well.  The Awards page.  Social Media people – remember, this is limited to a hundred or so members, most of whom are agencies so don’t take it too seriously. Most social media – good stuff – is coming up naturally, and won’t be thought of as mainstream award winning stuff.

Always think when looking at a campaign, “what can the audience do with the social media campaign assets?” If all they can do is pass it on as a viral video, it’s a viral marketing campaign, not social. Social means peer to peer, not agencies passing stuff to audience to pass on.  Social media has original content from the consumer, no? If not, TV is social content in the broader context because of course you rank, rate and blog about your experience of that locked down medium. But it’s simply not helpful to call ALL media “social”… we draw the line somewhere no?  How about at viral videos.  Oh, and we can have an argument on interactive/viral media vs social media here too.

Best Use of Social Media Awards.

Ta Da! Agencies do social media and give each other awards for them!  Here they are:

A. Cornetto by Soap.  Otherwise known as WillItBlend -With An Axe?

If you don’t know WillItBlend – where the fluffyduck have you been? – here ya go wikipedia.

Random info:

• Blog at blogspot since September 2007
• VIDEO: YouTube channel since September 2007. An average of 40-50k of views,  16 videos in a year and half. Here’s an example:
• PHOTO: Flickr page of Terry the Axe dude at events.  24 contacts. joined heaps of flickr foto groups though.
• MICROCOMMUNITY: cornetto.com.au WARNING! I mean this most sincerely. This site does WEIRD things to my top of the line Alienware beastie. Goodness only knows what it will do to your crappy old Apple Macs 😛 Community here means taking ‘safe’ music mixing it up and creating a track. You are then given a link – which I can’t give you because the pop up window doesn’t have any menus and CTRL C doesn’t work. But I can email it to you!  Not my definition of community IMHO. You decide.
• oh look, they’ve summarized it for you – basically a viral video

  

Disclaimer: Nope, don’t know them or anything about them. I like Cornettos though 🙂

B.  Presets – Talk Like That by Profero

Random Info

• w00t! Twitter! @talklikethat ouch! no profile! Mike Z might listen to me, but if not, AIMIA in general will take advice from Jennifer Wilson of Leanforward on Twitter profiles.  Though this is probably not a post she wants me linking to her from *laughs*  If I was a fan, I might think it really WAS the presets, no? 51 following/followers, 15 updates.
• Facebook group – 800 members. They (Canadians, Americans) were asking about their prizes on the wall, so I assume it’s a catch-all for Presets marketing worldwide? Goody, Aussie band, Aussie agency doing global stuff.
• Good synopsis here at WayCoolJnr‘s blog.  Read the comments to see that it didn’t cost as much as some might think!
• The widget wouldn’t work for me – you try here.
• My work is done here, by Nick. Heh.

Disclaimer: I have coffee with Mike from Profero once a year. He pays. I once did some lecturing at ADMA unpaid at his request. Got coffee though.

C.  MySpace Road Tour.

• what is it with the need to create faux persona’s? This one is Steve Irwin look alike, Jabba
• Billed as an interactive reality online series. Basically a ‘reality tv’ show without the reality. Broadcast on MySpace
• Usual Myspace stuff – MySpace Australia know what they do and they do it well. Competitions, promotions whatnot. Wikipedia page here on the campaign.
• Pick out the Leaders from a subgroup and give them a shot at fame. Formula works no? In this case “10 Extraordinary Users” (please, can we start to call customers ‘members’ not ‘users’. Or am I being a witch?)
• Summary, trek around Australia with some actors and a host, in a blue combi van (hey! I thought Telstra had trademarked that! ) film fans and put it online. Fans come online and vote for one of their peers that was filmed.
• 1800 friends (wonder how many were ‘spam friends’?) 189 comments.
• Actually I like the integration between online and offline activities. Another thing that MySpace totally gets, and is a revenue earner for them, in general.

Disclaimer: I have coffee with Rebekah and co from MySpace occasionally. Present at the same conferences. Do press for them – unpaid – like morning tv shows. Always mean to do something with the press releases they send me, but forget.

D.  Quantum Code by Sony similar to Sony/Google’s DaVinci Code game.

Random thoughts (Google Da Vinci here)

• They have removed a lot of content across the web such as their main site but  here on the UK site is some stuff. QR codes is fast becoming boring, to me. Then again so did traditional advertising. Heh.
• Far as I could tell, they didn’t provide the social element. More of a web game. I mean, if it’s not peer to peer how social is it?  Though Gizmodo officially? unofficially? offered some forums. Gone now.  THEY would’ve been interesting. I remember on the Da Vinci code game, we used to help each other out on blogs and forums. Not with the answers (*spoilers*) but with tips.
• Makes me cross when they delete stuff. If it was social, that’s it, Bang! your social network gone.  If it wasn’t, doesn’t matter so much. Not sure where user generated content fits in, but I do like games that have players helping other players.  The MMORPG industry was built on it – think World of Warcrafts 11 million players and their sub-ecosystem of support wikis and forums. Thousands of them! But I digress…  I don’t think they focussed a lot on support forums, otherwise, why hand all that lovely marketing information over to Gizmodo?
• 100 people showed up for the final clue/prizes.

Disclaimer: Sony are a client. Mostly electronics but some of their other divisions wander into our workshops. Adrian from games is a cool dude.

E.  ABC ArtPost similar to Red Bubble

Random thoughts:

• A version of the highly succesful Red Bubble – Australia’s (and world) premier online art community?
• I can’t login. Bugger. You guys go and look. I have a copy of my confirmation email here from ages ago. But it won’t recognise my email address to reset password. *grumpy face*
• The money shot – your stuff might appear on TV.
  • Want your art to appear on ABC TV?
    It’s as easy as grabbing your digital stills camera or handycam… Here’s how:

    1	Join or Login
    2	Set Up Artist Profile
    3	Upload Photos or Videos
    4	Create Stills Slideshow or Finalise Video

  • Red Bubble doesn’t have a broadcast channel!
• But redbubble DOES have merchandising – the ability to make money out of your products through peer to peer sales.
• Aren’t we getting away from social media campaigns and into customer service and community management here? Not sure.
• Remembering I can’t log in (and it’s logged me out for 20 minutes now for trying too darn hard LOL) I CAN see that the most popular images have been viewed up to 600 times.

Disclaimer:ABC have been a client, plus from time to time I do educational/promotional stuff for them. I want to take their community online and play with it. Mine! mine!

Dunno which is my favourite.  None? I like stuff with a social conscience – green things or save the whales or something. Educational, informative. Not stuff that smells like ” create a buzz with a faux persona or whatnot”.  What about you? I really must finish my list of social media campaigns for Australia – so you can choose from amongst those too. But later.  I’m off to late night shopping. While I’m gone, don’t forget to go to the AIMIA site and vote for your favourite campaign here.  Umm. Joking.