Last week we wrote about Wieden + Kennedy (Portland)’s social media campaign for Old Spice – the phenomenal viral videos that had millions tuning in to see and receive personalised messages from “spokesperson” Isaiah Mustafa through social media channels YouTube and Twitter.

The cheeky campaign propelled Old Spice to the top of the Viral Video Chart, collecting over 90,000 Twitter followers, 700,000+ Facebook fans and smashing records to become the all-time most viewed sponsored YouTube channel, with a total of 35.7 million individual video views. Of the top 11 most popular YouTube videos on July 16, Old Spice had eight of them.

There is no doubt of the social media success of Old Spice, starring the “Most Interesting Man in the World 2.0”, but is Mustafa’s popularity translating into sales?

Warc figures show that sales of the Old Spice product Red Zone After Hours Body Wash, which is being promoted by the campaign, have fallen by 7% in the 52 weeks ending June 13, despite Mustafa’s beloved pecs appearing on TV screens since February.

However the campaign didn’t reach its social peak until 13-14 July, so it remains to be seen if Mustafa’s videos are driving people to the stores to buy Red Zone.

We know that high social exposure does not necessarily generate demand, as seen when Gatorade this year launched its Replay social campaign (also a Cannes winner), which tracked down members of two American high schools’ rival football teams – 15 years after their senior year – for a rematch.

The campaign generated a strong online following – with webisodes and Facebook pages about the players – and the 15,000 tickets to the rematch sold out in 90 minutes. However Gatorade’s sales for the year declined by 8.5% nationwide.

And while it remains impossible to prove any fluctuations in demand are caused by a social presence, what Old Spice has achieved is what it set out to – awareness and visibility. Mentions of Old Spice on Twitter exploded last week, with many celebrities such as Alyssa Milano, Ellen DeGeneres and Perez Hilton getting involved and spreading the word.

In the sense of raising awareness and bringing the brand to the top of our minds, Old Spice has certainly been a social success.

Written by Lauren Rayner, Account Executive

Broadcaster, early adopter and leader of a 1.5million twitter entourage Stephen Fry, has been at the Hay Literacy Festival, and has been perusing through tweets entered on the festivals twitter page to find the most beautiful ever written. He found it, and it was from Marc MacKenzie from Canada, who wrote this tweet little gem.

“I believe we can build a better world! Of course, it’ll take a whole lot of rock, water & dirt. Also, not sure where to put it.”

Twitter is what you make it, some people prefer to retweet links and share information publicly, some people just prefer to watch and listen. Some people like Marc MacKenzie prefers to use the medium as a way of expressing his ‘odd thoughts’ that come to him, and amuse him, and make him want to share.

That is just one of the things I like about Twitter, it is many different things to many different people, and it has made 140 character prose writing into a modern art form.

Back in the 70’s/80’s, where I come, nobody had a vacuum cleaner. It’s not that we were scruffy, it’s just nobody ever said ‘vacuum cleaner’, we all had a Hoover instead. Regardless of what make you owned, it was still called a Hoover.

Digitally, the same thing has happened, as we no longer hear people say ‘get on the internet and search’ for something, we just hear ‘Google it’.

I believe it won’t be too long before the entire Internet will not be referred to as the Internet, but just ‘The Facebook’, because the internet will entirely fold into Facebook just about everyone, everything, and every brand, every website or microsite and even every software application, will be inside Facebook.  And as for the parts of that are not folded in? Well, they will still have a firm virtual grappling hook gripped into Facebook for safety.

Facebook have announced that as early as this month it will become a location based social experience, where people can ‘check-in’ like they can on Foursquare. This is because it is becoming more clear that people are prepared to disclose more and more about themselves, even their exact location, and this is a huge commercial property, and that is of course where brands need to be. And they will be there because there is nothing more valuable to brands than a source of real time crowd sourcing collective wisdom. Facebook, along with Twitter and other microblogs is becoming the most relevant, and valuable data available in the world.

The recent Open Graph API system has given every page on the internet the potential to have all of Facebook’s functionality built in, meaning that all activity we do on the internet could potentially be shared via Facebook. Spotify launched it’s new software version last week, allowing users to connect with Facebook and view all their friends play lists and listen to their music choices, and visa-versa.

This morning I signed up to Microsoft Docs Beta, which is giving me the whole Microsoft Office suite as an application within Facebook so I can now work within Facebook, and share my docs with my friends an colleges, via Facebook.

I am a fan of all things bright an new on the internet, but in my opinion, because of the ever advancing functionality it offers, Facebook is, again, the brightest and newest thing on the Internet.

Ron Conway, (who makes buckets loads of money cashing in on online trends) agrees with me. Well, let’s be realistic, I agree with him.

I’ve been reading loads of blogs about the election, all scrutinizing the marketing campaigns of the leading parties (most of which has been pretty unoriginal and unexciting I hasten to add). The big debate so far: is this a new media or old media election? See here for a recent example.

After the 2008 U.S. election people predicted that this one would be led from the bottom up, online and over social networks. But then when they announced that we would be getting the leaders debates on TV, the emphasis shifted to the power of television and how historically this has been an indication of the winning party.

The truth is this is the same old hackneyed debate that has been going on for some years but applied in new context. To discuss which is the most effective is entirely missing the point. Where people attribute the rise of the Lib Dems in the opinion polls to the TV debate, they are blinded by the fact that this was a TV first and missing what was going on online at the same time. Let’s not forget that this was also a first for Twitter which recorded a record number of tweets.

Moreover, people weren’t just tweeting from their phone or PC away from the television, they were watching the debate at the same time. Following the excitement of the event and over the course of the next couple of days, thousands of people joined the group “We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!” on Facebook, fuelling the poll rise even further. It seems completely clear to me that the two are not working in parallel universes of old and new media. Where TV works to raise the profile and awareness of a cause, online is effective at generating discussion, intensifying buzz and cementing opinions.

A great editorial article from Brand Republic in response to Mckinsey’s recent “A new way to measure word-of-mouth marketing” piece. If nothing else, proof that it is possible to pick apart any WoM measurement methodology.

Measurement based on such disparate discussions is a necessity of our marketing world, but it will never be perfect. It’s an approach that tries to add control to the uncontrollable. I mean, we’ve been OK with the fuzzy logic of brand tracking and TV ads for decades, and yet marketers now have to be held accountable for tracking sentiment? They might as well say “measure society” and look at the mess governments make of that!

So, instead of continuing to approach word-of-mouth with some kind of control as our raison d’etre, which leads trying to measure and quantify impacts, do we acknowledge that in an open setting, meaningful participation is our raison d’etre? After all, that’s what customers ultimately appreciate.

I’ll be watching the groundswell series of articles “How to unleash empowered workers without creating chaos: The HERO Compact” with interest. It deals specifically with the conundrum of getting employees closer to customers for large companies. A minefield of considerations, risks and interdependencies for big B2C operations, nevertheless, engaging customer issues directly can be entirely advantageous, done right.

It strikes me that the right people are essentially Product or Brand Managers, that is, anyone who acts as a hub for key information about a product or service within an organisation. They need to know about what they are selling down to the minutiae. However, these employees would also need the customer-savvy outlook of a PR person or perhaps Customer Services. PR people can mean too much spin, at least from a customer’s perspective, whilst a Product Manager can be too ‘honest’ or blunt. With training, and a solid set of operational guidelines, select employees could be allowed into the wilds of the Internet. They would be backed-up by a cross-functional ‘rapid-response team’, including PR, CS and tech people, to allow decisive and useful answers to customer input.

Too often issues circulating the web pertaining to an unprepared brand result in a knee-jerk response amongst top brass, who then push for action across the business, rather than from the right people - the results often proving counterproductive to ongoing efforts at dialogue in the space. Conversely, an organisation might put its metaphorical fingers in its ears and keep schtum. The Eurostar ‘wrong snow’ debacle should be a lesson to the follies of that approach.

It will be interesting to see how groundswell shows how to gear up teams and build an operational manual for social media engagement.

And for something completely different…what’s the moment when something that was cool became uncool? Can it be pinpointed? Take the humble tattoo for example. Formerly the preserve of rogues and the misunderstood and now the subject of a 6-minute R/GA video exposé.

Predictably enough, we do an annual predictions presentation and blog. And it’s nice when something comes to pass.

We had a bit of an epiphany (steady!) watching Nick Griffin squirm on Question Time, and us Twittering in real time. The ‘augmented reality’ - or perhaps ‘augmented virtuality’ would be better? - of a big social event with real time online social media interaction felt like it could be huge during this year’s major events (winter Olympics, World Cup, the inferno party). We blogged about it here.

Then, just last week the BBC went and branded it Social TV. Or maybe we were a little behind the curve? I don’t know. But we do think it’ll be huge, and the race will be on now among brands eager to exploit the new platform opportunities.

Another great tool for business from Google. Show the world where your business is and track users that find you via Google search.  Change your business listing by analysing the statistical data displayed on the Google dashboard. What users were searching for and where they are searching for it when they found your business could be useful information. Watch the video if your confused… From : http://www.google.com/lbc

We went to a talk the other week  on how the concept of ‘Play’ is integral to moving away from a persuasive form of marketing to a rewarding inclusive and interactive approach. Some key thoughts we took away were to look for ways to help people to ‘let go’ and get them to participate in something enjoyable (be it online or in the real world) with a relevant tie back to what your brand stands for.

The Fun Theory initiative from VW does exactly this, by inviting people to adopt a healthier and greener life by changing behaviour through ‘fun’.  With over 3.5m views in a week, the piano staircase video is doing a hell of a job to seed the idea and elevate the VW brand. Quite nice.

If Facebook were a country, it would be the 4th largest in the world - and only three years ago the majority of people outside of universities had never heard of it.

Now that’s a social revolution, if only it came with a national, or even global holiday in its name.

Publish iPhone applications directly from flash! This is great news for would be app developers who already know AS3 but don’t want to learn objective C. I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of Flash CS5 (I haven’t even used CS4 yet!).

Something we have often discussed with our clients is the honesty you need to have in social media circumstances. If you are great, discuss, if you are not great, discuss, but with an honest hat on, as you are always just one click away from exposure.

Something in recent months that highlights this was when Habitat decided to use trending topic hash tags on twitter such at the Iran revolution, to sell bedside cabinets, and it rightly so, got an absolute social media kicking.

Here is another example where a Honda employee was found out on Facebook, by someone simply searching another social media platform and seeing from Linkedin he was a planner at Honda.

Heres a pic of 2 infernites checking out the touch screen Spencer has been developing for a client.

Everyone who walks past it has the following reaction - Wow! - Touch - Amazing! - Laughter. I think they are laughing at the fact that it’s held up with blue tac and magazines! : ) I can hardly wait for the full experience .

Tesco.com have released the grocery API (Application Programming Interface)! This has really got people talking here at Inferno.  In basic terms the grocery API makes developing online / mobile applications that link to Tesco.com products very easy. I know it all sounds a bit nerdy, but developments like these (e.g. Amazon) open multiple new avenues of consumer purchasing behavior to marketers.

Webcams can be used for nicer things than just ads for price comparison websites. Here’s a music video from Sour. The cast were selected from their actual fan base, from many countries around the world.

Windosill is a whimsical and rewarding flash game… if you can make it past the first screen. Well worth a look if you have a few minutes to spare.

http://windosill.com/online/

Here’s an example of how companies like Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo are likely to be serving games in the future.

All the the gamer of the future needs, is a controller, screen, and net connection. Movements are sent from the controller to the server which does all the grunt work and streams a video of the game play to the users lounge room. Basically the need for a physical console is removed by delivering the game play as a TV channel in real time!

Apart from making gaming more accessible to more people (no more expensive consoles needed - just play the game in your browser), this technology will revolutionize interactive TV - by participating with the audience or hosts of TV shows in a virtual space in real time.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again now, one of the best things about the internet is it is live, and uncensored (well, in this part of the world it is uncensored anyway)

I remember watching the G12 Summit protests in London, live via twitter, and now it is happening in Iran, live and uncensored direct from the heart of the revolution, which I find compelling. #iranelection

‘My Tracks’ is a very cool T-Mobile G1 android app to help track your training using GPS - be it hiking, cycling, jogging or pretty much anything outdoors. It provides detailed info on your journey like elevation, speed, moving time, distance traveled etc. Once you have a track laid down, you can share the data online. Check out my route to work on the bike! Max speed -  29.70 km/h (18.5 mi/h).

I haven’t explored the google docs training aspect of this app yet (I only have a couple of journeys under my belt), but it looks to be a valuable tool in managing a training regime. Here is the official google app page - http://mytracks.appspot.com/