The Skittles social media mashup site works on so many levels. Firstly, it shows confidence in the strength of the Skittles brand. The social media strategy behind Skittles site shows confidence in being able to go with the conversation about the product. While I was on Twitter yesterday, the chatter around Skittles wasn’t necessarily positive, but it added to the general momentum of Skittles being talked about and staying in the top 2 or 3 trending topics on Twitter (a bonus really). Lesser brands would be feel buried in negative conversation.
Unscientific yet accurate Twitter user pie chart
Thanks to Brainz for this one, check out the other social network pie charts at Brainz post on social network user pie charts
Your brand is just not that into you
As advertising and marketing budgets are being slashed (don’t mention the “R word”), it’s probably worth looking at the way brands engage and relate to their customers. I’m inspired to put this into relationship terms after seeing the film, “He’s Just Not That Into You” (HJNTIY) . One of the male characters, Alex, is brutally frank in telling Gigi, how she is deluding herself on male romantic behaviour when a series of guys don’t call her or ask her out again – all when they say they are going to.
In much the same way Alex did, I am going to tell it like it is, with regards to the way brands (and the agencies acting on their behalf), toy with customers’ feelings, and keep them at arms length, or promise to contact without any actual delivery.
Here are my interpretations of the classic, dysfunctional customer relationships where customers are treated badly by brands:
The internet as confessional: anonymity and community
Social media sharing is spilling into “real life” is hot news with 11% of adults in the US updating their “statuses” via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (wonder what the statistic is in Australia?) and everyone is getting comfortable with the “overshare” of what they are doing right now/what they are working on now/just doing.
So why is it still so popular being anonymous and pour your heart out online? I have been following 2 anonymous Twitter confessionals SecretTweet and F*** My Life. Both have corresponding websites, and the Twitter accounts feed the wonderful, painful, funny and tell-it-like-it-is truths that are posted anonymously by the thousands of users.
7 ways Twitter helps you with your social life
So what happens when you do meet people you follow, or engage with or just see conversing on Twitter – in real life? Here’s why Twitter can help you have more fun in your social life and why you should attend your next local tweetup
Trends in data visualization: NY Times interactive Twitter mashup, Web Trends Map 4
Data visualization can do so much to simplify the complex, so was very excited to see this amazing interactive timeline mashup of Superbowl Tweets on NYtimes site. The creators kindly even put a separate stream just for the ad mentions and the Audi spot I wrote about yesterday got noticed. I think the IP settings […]