Favourite Australian social media campaigns

ByLaurel Papworth

Best social media campaigns, well, my favourite case studies anyway. Michael Watkins over at Mudo Media isn’t impressed. He thinks –via Digital Ministry – that social media strategists are all talk and no media. Is he right? Probably. But irrespective of whether anyone is actually hiring consultants, employing traditional agencies or just dumping it on…

Best social media campaigns, well, my favourite case studies anyway.

Michael Watkins over at Mudo Media isn’t impressed. He thinks –via Digital Ministry – that social media strategists are all talk and no media. Is he right? Probably. But irrespective of whether anyone is actually hiring consultants, employing traditional agencies or just dumping it on the junior Gen Y to get it all happening, it is happening in Australia. My fave ones so far:

GOVERNMENT SOCIAL MEDIA:

Future of Melbourne
Future of Melbourne

Future of Melbourne is excellent. Engagement is not using YouTube as a broadcast medium (shove up a video of Ruddles and ignore it) but actually asking for, and responding to community involvement. All good. (my post)

It would be tricky to say our government is not involved, though everyone always wants more. Malcolm Turnbull (active) and Kevin Rudd (less so) are on Twitter. Malcolm also blogs. Stephen Conroy referenced #nocleanfeed on Twitter on the temporary blog.

EDUCATION SOCIAL MEDIA

Education.au have set up a social network for teachers called me.edu.aume.edu.auYou can create a group to share your profile (Identity), blog (content) and communities (groups). Even more betterer than the other gov stuff in my book! 😉 great for Australian teachers.

CULTURAL SOCIAL MEDIA

I really like Seb’s work at Powerhouse museum. What’s not to love? Here’s his presentation:

Social media & government – an example / Web Directions South 2007

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: government nptech)

Close second is probably War Memorial guys, or National Library Flickr photo groups or the Australian National Dance collection.

NOT FOR PROFITS social media case studies

Dunno how to choose – Amnesty International Chinese censorship thingie? Lots of conversation there (20,000 threads I think?) By Care Network, Bendalls Group, dgmAustralia. Solidariti‘s work with Native Title (cross community promotional stuff) – actually, read her blog for all the non-profit campaigns in Australia. Priscilla, if you’re not busy, why not put together your fave NFP campaigns for last year?

Oh, I’ll settle on GetUp.org. While there is no doubt that they promote their own causes and get the community to rally behind their agenda, rather than giving the tools to the community to create and support the communities priorities, there’s no doubt that they are effective at using social media to motivate happy-go-lucky Australians. Except me. I just sit here blogging about them. In a happy-go-lucky way.

MILITARY Case Studies

That Defence force game by Visual Jazz?

attracted over 1.1 million unique players (one-third of our target audience of Australians aged 15 – 35!) 8.46% of all Defencejobs enquirers have a gamer profile on the DJ Games site, equating to approximately 6,000 job enquiries since launch.

Games where we get to kill each other are good no? 😛 Or maybe it was peeling potatoes or something?

Australian Navy has a wiki.

Crisis Management social media case studies

The Department of Fisheries used social media sites (Facebook, Blogs) to manage the Equine flu panics. They had to, the incorrect information flying around couldn’t be managed through traditional means.

TV and Entertainment

Too many to mention. Maybe Scorched.tv – editing bits of UGC into the Sunday evening telemovie on Nine didn’t make it any worse than usually Sunday evening telly viewing, honest! Heh.

Fitness case study

Too many to mention. Maybe Blackmores B YourBest Campaign? online community for fatties. Oops, was that politically incorrect?

Retail social media case study

Shoppers at Sportsgirl could vote their fave item, add it to Facebook. Yada yada. Pretty good though, if you are a materialistic, hair flicking, Gen Y who needs to share fashion with other materialistc, hair flicking Gen Y’s. And let’s face it, that’s all of ’em. God bless their materialistic, hair flicking, Gen Y souls 😀

I’ve deliberately stayed away from too much agency created content (though a few like Amnesty are there). But I love Fnuky in Adelaide. Irreverent and even irrelevant, they embody the soul of social media in agency form. Google “The Story of Ye Olde Adelaide Town” <- they nearly got the agency MD elected . *laughs* Oops, I just undid all the good work I did of putting Australian social media into a serious position on the media map. Ah well, never mind. For PR. Miraworld PR did a bunch of work:

National Tourism Board of Peru, Cinque Terre National Park, Great Wall of China, Fiordland in New Zealand and the Blue Mountains.

across LinkedIn, Xing, Plaxo etc.

Anyway, I ran those off the top of my head – getting tired of ‘experts’ who don’t do research so proclaim stuff isn’t working. Or kids who think they discovered social media, don’t do research and leave important aspects out of their unqualified pronouncements. Oops, was that a rant? Maybe we should ask the experts. Leaders like Gavin Heaton (servantofchaos), trib (acidlabs), lee hopkins (better communication), gary hayes (muvedesign.com) – wonder if they have any fave Australian Social Media case studies? I’d love Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) and Paull Young. Oh, and YOU.

25 Comments

  1. I thought the whole Scorched thing was HORRIBLE.

    The last thing Australia needs is its own LonelyGirl15 and it was so typical that Channel Nine would disingeniously jump on whatever technological bandwagon was around at the time.

    John Lacey’s last blog post..Thank you!

  2. yeah I agree, there’s enough viral videos masquerading as social media out there. And faux personalities masquerading as brand personalities are the suckiest.

    But I was talking about UGC pulled back into the show. Not the CassieHasDreams stuff. I”m not sure if they did it (didn’t notice) but they were really keen to take the videos from YouTube that fans had made and push it back in. You know, the lead actor turns and watches stuff on the telly but it’s actually user generated content. Or the camera pans past some fotos and they are from flickr. I know that some Second Life players put together a machinima on scorched that got some airing too, but not sure where.

    Top quality? nah, but it’s a start and it’s not agency created content.

    What was your fave social media campaign around a TV show? Big Brother forums? 😛

  3. Thanks for this post Laurel, its great to see a commentator actually talking with examples. It makes it a useful learning resource rather than a hollow attempt to be a thought leader. Brilliantly refreshing! Thank you!

    Emily’s last blog post..Plain wrong

  5. There are two meanings for “case study”.

    1. A detailed analysis of a person or group, especially as a model of medical, psychiatric, psychological, or social phenomena.
    2. a. A detailed intensive study of a unit, such as a corporation or a corporate division, that stresses factors contributing to its success or failure.
    b. An exemplary or cautionary model; an instructive example: “Before they lost their independence, [the two companies] were case studies in unsuccessful long-term planning” (T. Boone Pickens, Jr.).

    Number one is this whole blog, continually analysing the phenomena of social networking. This actual post is 2.b. exemplary or cautionary tales. Heh.

    Pedant.

  7. hmm you mean the “random thoughts” I threw up under the AIMIA stuff? I think this is a little more indepth, but not much more. It’s not meant to be.

    But since you asked: my blog is for me to place up a few paragraphs of thoughts. I sell – that word! – presentations, keynotes and whitepapers that outline case studies. They include
    *funding models
    *revenue streams
    *structure and management of social elements
    *quantity and features of social media assets
    *Porters 5 fold model for entry into the SN space
    *metrics, analytics and measurements of impact, reach, velocity, whatevs.

    I find it helpful to keep a little document, called Social Media Australia,on Google Docs. Whenever I come across a campaign, with hard numbers, agency etc I post it up there. So for example, Sportsgirl had an increase in sales by 30%, won (rightly) an AIMIA award, and was from the CITRUS agency. But if I slap that up on each of my faves, it’s gonna be a toilet roll of a blog post.

    And I know how tiny your attention span is, dear reader. You only value what you pay for.

    Why Ben, wanna hire me? 😛

  8. To be honest, I don’t work on much here in Australia. The last thing that came close to being social was the nameitburger.com.au promotion for McDonald’s – but I was only involved on the implementation side. Ideation and strategy was by @markpollard. Hugely successful. Won awards etc. But details are confidential … as most are.

    It’s not that people are worried about talking about the results of their projects, it’s that they cannot.

    Gavin Heaton’s last blog post..Top 129 Australian Marketing Pioneer Blogs

  11. Nice post Laurel, we need to start talking about these kinds of things more often in Australia, not just bagging each other.

    I use Postrank (scores posts on appearances on twitter, trackbacks, comments on blogs etc), and its sad to note that this is the least popular post of your last 10-15 posts.

    Simon T Small’s last blog post..Interpreting Facebook/MySpace

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  13. Laurel,

    Thanks for doing this post. I’ve added it to my Groundswell FriendFeed room. A room I’m using as part of my Groundswell Blook Report. Here’s the link to the room: http://friendfeed.com/rooms/blook-report-groundswell

    Each chapter of the book “Groundswell” is being dissected by me. I’m up to chapter 5 so far. I hope you and your readers get some value out of it.

    Chris Herbert’s last blog post..Groundswell Blook Report:Chapter Five-Listening to the groundswell

  15. Stuart, that one wouldn’t make my fave list. For a start, no clearly articulated backstory, purpose or values. But I accept it’s on yours 🙂 Cheers Laurel

  16. Thanks for the post. Very interesting. I’d like to learn, in more detail, what the Dept of Fisheries did with social media to manage the Equine flu panics and how successful it was for them. How might I go about finding this out?

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  24. Wow, only just saw this post! This would’ve been one of my first – back in the day when i didn’t analyze search results or follow trackbacks about articles I’d written 😛

    Thanks anyways for a) reading the post and b) heading a post up a about it.

    Many more to come hopefully 🙂

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