360DigitalInfluence

On October 27, I joined communications pros on Bulldog Reporter’s webinar “An Advance Look at Hot, New Google+: How It Will Impact PR Pros, Social Media Strategy and Your Customers.” Co-panelists were Jennifer Lashua, Global Social Media Strategist from Intel; Vidar Brekke, Chief Product Officer from Converseon; and Mark Traphagen, Internet Marketing Manager from Virante.

A lot of our value-add from Ogilvy comes from helping clients anticipate which platforms will win.  There are a million ways to optimize your social media presence, and spending more time on yet another social network is something many social media pros are not wont to do.  That said, despite social media fatigue, and despite the enhancements on Facebook released in the last few months, I’ve become more convinced that time spent on G+ is well spent.  The panelist laid out a compelling case.

“My friends aren’t in G+” is no excuse. We should never forget that Zuckerberg made a decision in establishing the “real identity” and “know in real life” folkways of Facebook.  Google+ doesn’t share these; in fact, panelists said that much of the value of Google+ comes from meeting new people around interests in the platform and having meaningful, thoughtful conversations.

continue reading

In the fury of learning about the new music platforms, we should also take a look at some of the lower-tech ways to make music work for brands.

Covers have long been a mainstay of YouTube content.  Two recent cover promotions are worth noting.

A.V. Club Undercover (Starbucks)

They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba
This promotion is now over a year old; Starbucks re-upped.  The premise was fairly simple; the folks at A.V. (the straight man music site affiliated with the Onion) made a list of 25 nostalgic indie songs and threw it out to 25 bands.  Each band picked a song to perform in the site’s Chicago office.  The longer the band waited, the smaller the list got.  This nice, simple game mechanism encouraged bands to record songs early and added an extra layer of drama for those of us watching the promotion.

continue reading