The Great Social Media Exploitation

A while back, I wrote of how I was growing tired of Facebook. On a personal level, I do feel I’m starting to “come out the other side”; reverting back to the telephone over wall posting, meeting new people at parties rather than on pages, and counting friends on fingers rather than calculators. I did try to get into Twitter, but felt I was shouting into a black hole with no acoustics. I also contemplated Google+, Pinterest and Flickr, but became so overwhelmed by it all that I chose to reclaim my life in the real world. Maintaining other-world existences on all these sites is seriously time consuming. My time is precious to me, so I figured it would be better invested elsewhere.

I do not dismiss the power of social media. For businesses, the many platforms available offer a huge array of opportunities. And for individuals, once you cut away all the frills and hype, a following can be exploited to advantage.

Many people first adopted social media for a number of reasons; curiosity, the need to show off, genuine interest, keeping in touch etc. The next stage of social media is now all about exploitation. People are starting to realise that the followers they have cultivated and nurtured – for whatever reason – can be exploited to their advantage.

One new business that exemplifies this theory is innovative start-up, Victor. The company has basically tapped into the unused private jet seat market, and has set up a service that allows anyone to sign up and book themselves one of these seats at an affordable price. Apparently around 40% of private jet flights are completely empty (having only been booked to fly one leg), and 60% of seats in total are empty. Victor has set up deals with jet companies that allow them to offer these, otherwise wasted seats, to paying customers.

The end cost of each seat depends on the plane’s final capacity; the more seats are reserved, the less tickets will cost. For example, a seat on an empty scheduled flight from London to Barcelona would cost me around £6,500. However, if that 12-seater plane goes on to become fully booked, my ticket would only cost me around £600. Victor therefore allows and encourages members to form online communities, through which they can liaise with each other and coordinate group bookings. There is also – of course – the option of finding new members that will sign up and book…

…Suddenly those 400 friends of mine on Facebook come in handy. Victor offers what sounds like an amazing service and opportunity. I’d never have dreamed I could afford to go on a private jet – but now this is suddenly possible. Surely a few of these “friends” of mine would feel the same? In comes social media exploitation. Suddenly the more friends or followers I have, the more chance I have of flying private. No more check-in queue hell, no more clambering over other passengers to get to the loo, no more strangers’ elbows poking in either side of my rib cage.

Ok, I wonder if those 200-or-so Facebook “friends” I de-friended will be my friend again… 

By Jessica Matthias

Olympic Countdown

At a recent media breakfast, they were all banging on about Twitter and how much of an impact it will have during the Olympic Games. Following the announcement that the UK’s tweeting population is now the fourth largest in the world, this is hardly surprising. Currently standing at 10 million- the UK’s twitter following is greater than the circulation figures for all our national newspapers combined.

So for those writing about the Olympics (and we know every man and his dog will be), how will Twitter affect them?

MSN are posting real-time updates on the games, complete with ‘athletes in action’ videos, torch mapping and readers’ submissions, pictures and tweets. Of course they will be curating the tweets sent in, but surely that’s going to be one hell of a job?

BBC on the other hand, are launching a special radio station – BBC Radio 5 Olympics Live Extra – for the games and will have up to 24 live streams available across four screens, including PC, mobile, online and connected TV.

Although the Bejing Olympics was not that long ago, the London Olympics will be the first truly social Games. In technology terms, 2008 was hop, skip and a long jump away from where we are today. There wasn’t a high demand for apps, tablets hadn’t taken off yet, and the concept of watching live TV on our mobile phones was something many people couldn’t get their head around.

At the media breakfast, Head of Social Media at MSN UK, Darren Waters, claimed that social media has moved from being a social network and is now, in fact, a destination. 

So whatever platform you will be watching it on, you are sure to feel like you are there – even if you are sitting at your desk moaning about how long it took you to get in. 

By Stephanie Rock

Battle of the Brands

Burger King or McDonald’s. Be it on a long-haul bus journey or in a slightly inebriated state late at night, it’s a conversation we’ve all had. Which side of the fence you fall may not define your entire character, but it certainly pigeonholes you in terms of chip preference.

Competition amongst brands is now so ingrained into our consumer consciousness that we take it as verbatim. We understand Burger King’s rivalry with McDonald’s as the fast-food equivalent of Lex Luthor vs Superman. Adidas and Nike are the Saxons and Normans of the sporting world, whilst the fight between Blackberry and Apple seems as old as that between tortoise and hare.

Nevertheless, these great brand battles are not organically born. Yes consumers will naturally compare brands which produce similar products within a similar price range, but it is clever marketing from the brands themselves which positions them as mortal enemies. With a little careful manipulation, consumer preference can become fierce allegiance and indifference turned to disgust.

In the Metro this week, Ross McGuiness wrote an article documenting the competitive marketing history of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. McGuiness traced the rivalry right back to 1936, when a recession damaged Pepsi-Cola decide to take a pop at its pricier competitor.

Almost seven decades later, and it seems that the rise of social media and the consequent multiplication of marketing platforms has only intensified the Pepsi-Coke rivalry. Brand allegiance is now not only encouraged through competitive pricing, but through fully integrated campaigns that use social media to create comprehensive and contrasting brand images. Last month Coca-cola announced a partnership with Spotify, whilst Pepsi introduced Pepsi pulse; an entertainment curation platform built into the brand’s website.

So far so good. Pepsi and Coca-Cola are by no means faultless brands, but at least competition between the two seems focused on offering their consumers more.

Other brands use competitive marketing less successfully though, and to the potential detriment of their brand image. I see the recent guerilla marketing stunt, staged in Australia by Blackberry makers, RIM, as illustrative of this. The ‘Wake-Up’ campaign sought to position the Blackberry OS 10 as a competitor to the iPhone 4S through a sequence of flashmob protests, including one staged outside the Apple store in Sydney.

Now in my opinion this campaign had one very glaring problem: It demanded consumers ‘Wake-Up’ and abandon their allegiance to Apple and their iPhones, without providing them any real incentive to do so. The campaign was so focused on dismissing its competition that it seemed to forget its promotional objective in the process.

Competitive marketing is not a bad thing. It can turn a brand into a talking point, define its positioning and turn consumers into faithful fans. Nevertheless, if the RIM debacle can teach marketers one thing it’s this; competition is not the be all and end all- it’s the competitor that counts.

By Polly Robinson

#trending

A week ago today, the office was all of a flutter as reports started to emerge of a disturbance on Tottenham Court Road.

Now Michael Green (the source of disruption) taught me one thing that day; if you want to create an impact on a weekday in central London- kick off at lunchtime. As we sat, chomping on our bagels and browsing our twitter feeds, office workers across town were roused from their state of Friday lethargy by the noise of sirens and reports of an armed man. Suddenly there was something to talk about- and when I say talk- I mean tweet.

Within minutes each of us, closeted as we were in our Marylebone office, had our own account of events. At first Starbucks was touted as a possible target but soon it became clear that a nearby HGV training facility was the focus of unrest. Initial reports also implicated a disgruntled employee, but then course failure was exposed to be the bone of contention.

The power of social media is no longer in dispute.  The 2011 protests in Egypt have been widely dubbed the Facebook revolution and in March 2012 a viral YouTube video catapulted the Kony 2012 campaign to fame. Never before though, has the role of social media as a disseminator of up-to-the-minute information been made more apparent to me.

Last Friday everyone in the surrounding offices had the opportunity to become a reporter for the day- and they took it. Just after 12.30 the first pictures of flying filing cabinets began to appear on twitter and soon #tcr and #HGV were both trending. One particular YouTube video began to make an appearance. It showed Abby Baafi, the alleged target of the attack, giving her version of events.

Yet in the clamour of conflicting information, some voices remained noticeably silent… or at least frustratingly vague. Initial reports on the BBC news website seemed to centre more on subsequent bus route diversions than the incident itself and although certified journalists were on the scene, their voices lacked definition against the chorus of amateurs.

The BBC and national newspapers’ reticence in reporting is, if not reasonable, then certainly understandable. These are organisations that have a responsibility and legal obligation to tell the truth. Their distribution of unauthenticated and therefore possibly false information could not only damage their reputations, but also end in expensive liable cases.

Nevertheless, when the modern world demands delivery of real time information, where does this leave them? Cynics might say nowhere- that breaking news reporters are dinosaurs due for extinction, casualties of the social media impact, but I believe the situation is more nuanced than this.

Call me naïve, call me nostalgic but I do not foresee the end to quality reporting coming any time soon.  Yes our approach to media is evolving but until twitter can weed out the fact from fiction and provide me with one objective account of events, there will always be room in my life for the BBC. 

By Polly Robinson