Talking of Lent I presume we’ve all seen the news of the Pope Benedict tendering his resignation in an unprecedented, unpredicted move. As the Reuters blog lamented (in reference to the Pope being a Tweeter) ‘… it could have been the Tweet of the century’. Quite. Still, news of the resignation did generate over 1,500,000 comments on Twitter alone. I’ll let you carry out a bit of research to determine whether the comments were positive or negative.

 
Of more recent news (can you believe in a Digital Age that the news of the Pope’s retirement doesn’t warrant the label ‘recent’ attached to it) has been the amount of hacking that has taken place in recent days. A cursory glance at the BBC News Technology page shows 7 of the main stories relate to hacking. Did anyone see the Burger King story? Whilst not for a single moment do I agree with hacking of any sort, I couldn’t help but smile at McDonald’s quick denial, quick to (quite rightly I’d hope) cleanse themselves of any blame. Still, the wry smile is tempered with a genuine concern for the risk that hacking presents on an everyday basis. It’s quite scary how few people have the necessary privacy settings and firewalls installed on their systems… When was the last time that you checked yours?

 Whilst you may think the title of today’s blog post may have originated from one of our national tabaloid newspapers, this is a story on the BBC website that I’ve decided to comment on today. Prior to when I starting working in this sector last year, I falsely believed that the threat of a cyber attack was solely confined to the realms of fiction, with movies such as Die Hard 4 and Skyfall having ‘cyber’ as being the main terrorist threat, as a means of crippling a countries infrastructure. Nevertheless, a quick Google search brings up a number of alarming stories of previous thwarted cyber attacks. More specifically, critics are arguing that the UK’s defence forces are relying too heavily on IT – thus potentially leading to a compromising, incredibly concerning situation.

Whilst I’ll stop my doom-mongering there (can you tell I’ve still got the Christmas hangover) I am concerned, albeit not surprised that students and organisations alike simply have no contingency plans in the event of a ‘digital shutdown/malfunction’. In a digitally-drive age, I find myself relying on digital devices/platforms/support to carry out every day activities – shopping for groceries in my local supermarket; checking my online bank balance; reversing the car… Are we lazy? Or simply used to technology helping us along every step of the way? Of course, this is before we even start talking about our actual digital devices (MP3 players/tablets etc). 

 It would be interesting to hear what everyday digital devices/support systems people would struggle to cope without.

As the final hours of 2012 ebb away, I wanted to take some of the short time we’ve got left to wish all of our partners in Carrot Media a happy new year for 2013. Here’s hoping that 2013 brings health, success, and happiness to one and all. With this being the final post of 2012, I thought that I would use this post to look back at some of the digital highlights from 2012. Here are my top 10 memories of 2012 in online, digital format (in no particular order):

1. Facebook goes public:  This point isn’t referring to the sharing of a private photo of Randi Zuckerberg that recently came to light. Moreover, this refers to Facebook’s public listing on the stock exchange in May 2012. Facebook’s initial share price of $38 valued the firm at $104 billion (approximately £66 billion to you and I). Whilst potential investors were whipped into a frenzy of how Facebook shares could be the panacea for individual economic woes, mere two weeks later prices had fallen to $29. The fall from grace has been somewhat subsided, although the current share price  (of almost $26) has seen investors ‘jumping ship’ or strapping in for the long haul to see any return on their investment.
2. Kony 2012: Launched by the charity Invisible Children, Kony 2012 refers to a short film released by the charity in March 2012. The purpose of the video was to promote the ‘Stop Kony’ movement, aimed at seeing the Ugandan dictator arrested by the end of the year (when the video is due to expire). Whilst the initial film (attracting almost 96 million views as of this morning) did raise awareness of some of the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony, the film was not without its critics. Namely, Invisible Children were accused of oversimplifying cultural considerations and the manipulation of facts. Tellingly, the follow up video (released in May 2012) has ‘only’ attracted circa 2 and a half million views.
3. US election 2012: Whilst this has been discussed extensively in previous blog postings, it would be amiss not to touch upon the US election (particularly as the strategy employed by Obama’s team is a personal highlight of mine). Obama trounced Romney in the digital arena, and whilst these figures weren’t proportionately represented on election night, online interaction certainly gave a clear indication of how Americans were going to vote.
4. Nick Clegg say’s ‘sorry’: Following on from a torrid pillaring by the media and the electorate, Nick Clegg (for the time being deputy PM and leader of the Lib Dems) decided to say ‘sorry’ for not following through on the Lib Dems promise to abolish tuition fees (instead supporting a Tory proposal that sees students paying upto £9,000). Following his apology, sharp-witted wannabe mixers gave Nick Clegg a bit of a makeover. Nevertheless, Nick Clegg was a good sport and agreed for funds raised to be donated to good causes.
5. Lord McAlpine targets Twitter users: Following on from wrongly being implicated in a BBC Newsnight investigation, Lord McAlpine followed up successfully suing both BBC and ITV with a promise to target Twitter users who had spread scandal in relation to his name. As of yet mainstream news outlets have yet to report Lord McApline following through on his promise. Nevertheless, this should hopefully serve as a warning to anyone who posts defamatory comments on social networking sites.
6. Standing on the top of the world: Prior to October 2012 Felix Baumgartner is a name that you probably hadn’t heard of. You still may not have. When I first heard the name, I thought it would be a cool name for a Bond villain. Mr Baumgartner etched his name into the record books with his supersonic free fall, plunging into oblivion (or more accurately, falling the 24 miles to earth, breaking the speed of sound in the process). This was all captured on the YouTube channel with a record audience of 8 million watching the jump live.
7. Gangnam style: Yours truly spent some time in Gangnam in May 2007 whilst living in South Korea. I must be one of the few people who hasn’t seen the dance from start to finish that has allegedly got dad’s, grandmas, teachers, and doctors waving their arms madly in the air all over the world. In November 2012, the Gangnam Style video surpassed Justin Beiber’s ‘Baby’ track as the most viewed YouTube video of all time.
8. It’s good to be British: The jubilee and Olympics and Paralympic games saw the world express their opinion on the UK as never before – didn’t we do well?
9. That’s gonna hurt: Whilst I winced when I first saw this video, it demonstrates nicely how social media can connect the most ordinary of people with the outside world. Digital media (for better or worse) has brought us closer together (at least in sharing information) than ever before – allowing us to laugh, cry, get angry, sad, express an opinion and raise awareness.
10. The resurrection of the Carrot Media blog (a bit of self-appreciation there!).

Happy New Year 2013 from all at Carrot Media!

Notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of students are disciples of the social media generation, there are a variety of social media a analytical tool that enable students to get a real handle on conversations and provides them with solid supporting evidence. Google Analytics is an example of one of the free to use tools that all businesses should really have set up on their page. In short, this enables organisations to identify the number of page visits (and where the visits originated from). There are other platforms out there too… SM2; Brandwatch; Hitwise… Whilst these latter three are particularly expensive, it’s a crying shame that so many businesses aren’t using the likes of ‘Social Mention’ and ‘Facebook Insights’.

A colleague and close friend once described these analytical tools as being the ‘under the car bonnet’ elements of the digital marketing world. It’s all well and good having a slick digital presence, but without knowing what the reach, sentiment, or power of our messages are… We’ll be in danger of being left behind.

Look out in the near future for some slides related to some of these key platforms…

So what have we been up to at Carrot Media (aside the normal, day-to-day shenanigins). Last Wednesday (7th November) we went along to the North East EXPO event. It was great to see clients and make some new friends at the event – it’s really encouraging to see the thriving success of so many businesses in the North East considering all of the ‘doom and gloom’ that we encounter within mainstream media.

Anyone that did come along to the event would have met our very own @PCDavidMcGarry. If you go onto his Twitter page you’ll find that PC David McGarry concedes that he is not a real person. More importantly, he’s our very own office cardboard cut-out.  Look out for PC David McGarry travelling around the UK with Justin and Hollie. We actually had a wee bit of fun with attendees at the EXPO event – we encouraged people to pose with PC David McGarry – check out Pink Impression’s Facebook page for some images that made us chuckle.

Alan has been working with us for a number of years and if you’re not familiar with his work I think this event could be an eye opener.

This is the information from Alan’s blog which gives you all the details:

We welcome you and your friends to the ALAN REED CHRISTMAS EXHIBITION PREVIEW in the Studio & Gallery in Ponteland

Friday 9th November to Sunday 11th November  9.30 – 5.00pm
(Exhibition continues until 24th December)

New original Paintings and Prints, Christmas Cards, Bookmarks, Hand made glass, gifts and glass Christmas tree decorations.

Mulled wine, mince pies, fresh coffee, chocolate brandy snaps and a childrens bran tub.

Here you will see a small selection of paintings which will be on view for the exhibition, you may purchase online or reserve, however, the painting will need to remain on display in the gallery for the preview weekend.

Feel free to give them a buzz so they know you’re going to attend. Their contact details can be found here: http://alanreed.com/contact/

Something that I would like to touch upon today is related to a lecture given by the excellent Andrew Keen. This lecture focused on the notion that search engines and the majority of social media platforms (and certainly the most popular ones including Facebook and Twitter) being free (in the sense that there are no subscription charges – we’re putting aside for one moment the charge of our internet connections and mobile monthly charges – let’s set aside the economist viewpoint for somewhere else!). In a nutshell, Keen vehemently argued against organisations such as Facebook and Google, whose business models focuses on using online behaviour and patterns of consumers to maximise advertising revenue from a range of clients. We are all part of a big con, and we let ourselves be swept up in the hysteria surrounding the modern day phenomena.

I’m inclined to agree with Andrew Keen. Whilst I’ve not closed my Facebook account (I use Facebook to keep up-to-date with family and a smattering of friends dispersed around five continents) I have certainly tempered my Facebook interaction in recent times. I have removed from my account my date of birth (which probably explains why I only received two text messages wishing me a happy birthday this past Sunday); my place of work; my location; who is in my family; and the ‘where I’ve been’ map. The only brands I like are Clearly Stated (a family firm) and Carrot Media Ltd. I wonder if anyone out there has actually tempered their use of Facebook in other ways (and the reasons why!)?

An interesting thought to close on – would we be prepared to pay a nominal fee (say £10 a month) for a search engine/a social networking site that didn’t use our data for targeted ads?

Onto this week’s thoughts… Did anyone see the story about #WaitroseReasons hashtag spectacularly backfiring on the organisation? To set the scene… Waitrose decided to encourage their Twitter followers to state ‘I shop at Waitrose because…’ (followed by their reason for shopping with the #WaitroseReasons hashtag included). In short Waitrose were pillared, with various tweets presenting ‘tongue in cheek’ answers mocking Waitrose’s upper market, upper price positioning. My particular favourite tweets include:

• I shop at Waitrose as there’s a better class of shoplifter!
• I shop at Waitrose as I like to look down at others whom shop elsewhere…
• I shop at Waitrose to pick up the 24ct gold toilet paper.

Very tongue in cheek and probably not what the marketing department expected (check out Skittles and McDonalds examples for further evidence of this). Of course they’ve been open to ridicule and it’s been picked up my major news outlets.

Is a high end supermarket though really going to be this naïve? Part of me wouldn’t be surprised, yet has this really harmed Waitrose? Tweets and blog entries are now talking about… Waitrose! This draws us back to the old adage – there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

There’s certainly some key findings:

• Firstly, Mitt Romney has come out and stated that perhaps he should have phrased his argument in a different manner. Quite.  Romney’s most ‘liked’ post on Facebook (by over 60,000 individuals) stated ‘… Under President Obama nearly 23 million Americans are struggling for work’.
• Despite Romney’s outburst, the claim that there’s no such thing as bad publicity certainly rings true for Romney. Over the past 30 days he’s seen his fan base on Facebook increase by 54.5% (compared to a 3% increase for Obama).
• Despite these vast proportionate increases, in real terms, Obama’s still increased his Facebook fan base by around 20 and a half million over the past month!

So what does this tell us? At least on Facebook (and other social media channels) Romney has some way to catch up. Revelations such as last Monday spread like wild fire. In a few weeks I’ll be speaking about social media campaigns that I admire (Obama’s 2008 campaign will be in there somewhere). Obama’s team in the past (and currently) embrace digital marketing channel like no other politician before him…

Whilst my opinion on who I think (or who I want to win) the US election  is redundant at the moment, with these number’s Romney must be certainly hoping there aren’t any more error strewn gaffes in the pipeline.