What do you call an online campaign that is centered around a game or contest? You guessed it: “Gampaign”. Today we launched our latest game, “Search Party”, for our fashion client Napapijri. The premise is simple: While shooting their Fall/Winter collection in Iceland, they left 3 bags behind. Create a search party and find the bag using an interactive map and you could win tickets for 4 to Iceland.
In the United States, Thanksgiving is this Thursday, November 25. It's a holiday that is rife with overindulgence, football, and family (and all the unhealthy dynamics that family represents).
RockMelt launched in private beta on Sunday and so far the reviews seem to be mixed. Maybe that's because so many of us were burned by the promise of Flock.
Remember what it was like in the old days (circa 2000)? You needed multiple arms to juggle the myriad of electronic gadgets and accessories we all carried around. You had your laptop, cell phone, PDA, and other bright, shiny accessories.
We’ve been watching and writing about Twitter for over a year now and a recent Mashable article highlights some of the concerns we’ve seen with recent Twitter developments
Given their recent track record with the likes of Google Wave and Google Buzz basically tanking from the word go, it’s difficult not to feel skeptical when Google releases a new “revolutionary” product.
Foursquare was doing very well for itself. It was marching along at the head of the location based services (LBS) trend with almost three million users having fun by “checking in” to restaurants
If you’re like me, you use Twitter every day but never go actually go to the Twitter site. In the past week, Twitter has upgraded a feature on their site
It should come as no surprise that Google Wave is being shuttered by the end of the year. It’s another in a long line of failed efforts from the search giant. Sure, Wave was pretty much set up to fail as Google
Like any media, social media takes planning and commitment. Unlike other mediums, social media requires a level of understanding and commitment not necessary
We love Twitter at events. We’ve covered how Twitter was used at SXSW and created a simple guide on how to use Twitter at your next event. The past weekend saw the Super Bowl of pop culture and
StumbleUpon may just be the traffic goldmine you’ve been looking for
StumbleUpon has a reputation as an idle time waster, and as such is often overlooked as part of a serious strategy to promote web content. But in reality it’s a widely used tool for people to find new, highly targeted content tailored to their interests. In fact, almost 10 million people have jumped on board this discovery tool, recommending over 5.4 billion pages in the last year alone.
When we noticed StumbleUpon was sending us a lot of visitors, we decided to look deeper into how it works and how to enhance traffic from the service. With minimal effort, you can get hundreds, or many more, new visitors. Here is a quick guide on how to get your content to go viral among the stumblers of the world and give your numbers a swift kick in the pants.
How it works Installing the toolbar puts a “Stumble!” button in your browser. You select the topics you are interested in – say Arts, Marketing and Roleplaying – and when you hit Stumble you are sent to a webpage about one of those topics that other people have recommended. Pages are only registered when a user specifically recommends it. While you’re stumbling along, you also have a thumbs up/down button to pass judgement on the page (if you click thumbs up on an unregistered page, it will open a form for you to submit that page to the database). A page with a lot of thumbs ups will have more people sent to it, and vise versa.
May the best man win Creating brilliant content is key in all social media, but it’s especially vital with StumbleUpon. If Stumblers aren’t giving you a thumbs up, the service will stop sending people to your site. Put extra effort into creating intriguing headlines and striking visuals as it is in the nature of Stumblers to quickly click away from a page if they don’t think there’s anything of interest. You’ve only got a few seconds to hook them, so make them count.
Be selective with what you submit Certain kinds of content do well on StumbleUpon. It’s a long haul traffic source, so timeless content is more likely to do well than breaking news. Since visitors by and large don’t know you, the page also needs to work as stand alone content and not require delving deeper into your site. Great big no-no’s include pages that have long load times, protected content that requires a sign up, layouts laden with ads and any page with pop-ups - all of those will send people clicking away immediately.
Advocate stumbling Put a “Submit” button on your website or blog so people can recommend it with one click, even if they didn’t arrive via StumbleUpon. As many don’t know about the service, it’s also not a bad idea to write a post or article educating people about StumbleUpon and why they should use it.
Cheaters never prosper If you’re thinking you’ll just register and recommend all your pages yourself, StumbleUpon is way ahead of you. Submitting loads of pages from one site will get your account blacklisted (and they won’t even tell you, it’ll just stop working). The only way to effectively submit your own content is to use StumbleUpon genuinely and often, and be very selective about which of your own pages you submit. Also note that if you have avid fans that recommend all of your pages, the value of each thumbs up will quickly diminish, eventually reaching zero. In short, your recommendations need to be from a wide array of active stumblers.
Or just take the shortcut: pay for stumblers If you’re strapped for time and want an overnight traffic boost, you can join StumbleUpon’s ad program. You first specify your target audience by category, demographics and geography and StumbleUpon will recommend your content to relevant individuals when they click the Stumble button. But it’s still on you to impress them - the more people that recommend your page, the more traffic you’ll get.
StumbleUpon is one of the most genuine recommender communities where each person can shape the content. If you think you've got the content to get loads of thumbs up, dive in and start stumbling your way up the charts.
Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.
There has never been a better time for marketers to directly influence a buyer’s decision. Through mobile apps, businesses can build brand loyalty and add value to the user experience. Smart marketers are now adding simple location-based services to their toolbox.
Location-based apps are the hottest thing going right now. Leading the pack is Foursquare. Foursquare isn’t the first location-based app on the market, nor is it the biggest, but what it does have going for it is that it’s the current media darling. The star of this year’s SXSW, this app is proving it’s not just for letting people know where you like to eat and shop.
The system is simple: you check-in to a location, earn badges for multiple check-ins and score points which, in some instances, can lead to real-world rewards from retailers. Local restaurants and bars have started offering free drinks, appetizers and discounts to the person that checked in the most to their establishment. Now you’re seeing the likes of Bravo, Virgin Airlines and Harvard University taking advantage of app to further reward customers. We searched the web to find examples of companies using this simple app in ingenious ways and found four great examples.
Harvard University has teamed up with Foursquare to create a campus-based game that rewards students who check in to locations with badges and helpful bits of information. The idea is to encourage students to connect with others and explore more of the campus. It’s a brilliant way for freshmen to learn about the university and connect with more people.
During New York Fashion Week, fashion designer Marc Jacobs created a “Fashion Victim” badge. It allowed customers during the week to check-in at any Marc Jacobs store to unlock the badge. Four people who unlocked the badge in New York received passes to attend the Marc Jacobs fashion show.
Shoe phenom Jimmy Choo has established a treasure hunt around London using Foursquare. A pair of Jimmy Choo trainers check-in at a location somewhere in the city and whomever checks-in and says, “I’ve been following you” to the pair of trainers before they leave the location will win a pair of Jimmy Choo training shoes. People can track the trainers through their Foursquare user page and their Twitter profile.
Desperate to stay relevant, The Wall Street Journalhas created special badges that provide interesting facts about New York City and reviews of local business and movies. It’s always great when a print giant like the WSJ embraces new media instead of fighting it like so many other print outlets.
Hopefully you now feel inspired to craft a location-based campaign of your own. Feel free to share any bright ideas.
Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.
The lowdown on Twitter’s new geolocation service and what it can do for you
Long whispered about, Twitter has unveiled its entry into location based services: Twitter Places. In this new geolocation foray, you will be able to tag tweets with the location you happen to be in (much like check-ins on Foursquare and Gowalla) thus creating a Twitter Place. Users can click on said Place and see all the other recent tweets from that location in one stream.
Places is a great addition to Twitter’s functionality, and was an inevitability given the skyrocketing popularity of location based services. And rightly so, they create lots of fun, useful applications. Here are five new possibilities Places has created for Twitter:
1. Follow events in real time from anywhere Say you’re trying to follow the latest news from some major event, like a conference, festival or the World Cup. What you really want is to get updates from people on the ground, not the worldwide chatter flooding hashtags and search words. Twitter Places will make listening only to the people at the event possible for the first time by following a stream of tweets from only that location, whether it be a stadium, conference hall or street corner. This also adds a new level of engagement for anyone organizing events, as they can promote both remote and on location interaction through Places.
2. Reward programs for “check-ins” This was already happening with the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla (which are integrated with Places), but now it’s possible through Twitter itself – the much more popular and market saturated mobile service. This means a company or organization can incentivize Twitter users to visit and tweet from their Twitter Place by rewarding them just for participating, or get creative with scavenger hunts and competitions.
3. Get recommendations on the spot Having trouble deciding what to order off the menu at a new restaurant? Or what shoes to buy at the mall? Or whether you should get a 6 shot iced venti with 2/3 half-caf and 2 1/2 pump sugar-free cinnamon dolce, or a 13 shot venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mocha with extra white mocha and caramel? Check out what other visitors to your location have had to say and you might find some golden advice.
4. Twitter apps move into the geolocation dimension Third party apps have always been a fundamental part of Twitter and its success, so you can expect a wave of new apps utilizing Places in creative ways. This makes the timing of Places’ release interesting from a business standpoint, as Twitter announced just a few weeks ago that they will start taking a cut of the profits from 3rd parties. So if you’re a company looking to cash in on Twitter’s new API, Twitter might come knocking, wanting to cash in on your profits.
5. A new level of gauging user sentiment Analyzing Twitter has been unearthing some brilliant insights into people’s attitudes and behavior. Places should allow for even more specific and refined research, which is good news for online savvy businesses, as well as consumers who have yet another way to talk back to companies and give them their two cents.
Those were just some of my initial thoughts. I’d love to hear any ideas you have for using Twitter Places, leave a comment if you have any epiphanies.
Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.
The very best social media tools for getting the most out of the 2010 World Cup
When the World Cup rolled into Germany in 2006, YouTube was in its infancy, the iPhone didn’t exist and no one knew what a Twitter was. Things have changed a bit these past few years.
Starting today, we will witness the crashing together of two behemoths: the world’s grandest sporting event and the world’s vast social networks. Prepare to have your Facebook, Twitter and every other kind of feed experience a noticeable shift in focus for the next three weeks as every football fan gets the chance to become a global sports reporter without leaving their living room.
There are loads of options for following the 64 games in painstaking detail, but we’ve sorted through them all and put together the top tools that deliver everything you need.
There are lots of great apps dedicated to the World Cup, but ESPN’s is the cream of the crop and the only one you really need. You’ve got the full schedule, you can select which teams you want to follow to stay updated on breaking news, and stats and bios of every player for every team. You can even get a history lesson in the major events of tournaments past and interact with other fans by posting comments from within the app. If you’re willing to dole out $8, you gain access to radio broadcasts of every game, letting you follow matches no matter what you’re pretending to do at work. And to think a few years ago I was happy with cutting tournament brackets out of the newspaper.
Sure you can try to follow cluttered, hectic hashtags (like #wc2010 or #worldcup), but Twitter has done you a favor and created a World Cup headquarters themselves. They’ve done a great job of it, too. On the homepage, you’ve got a flow of the top tweets, which is superior to hashtags because it doesn’t just pull in the latest World Cup tweets, but uses an algorithm to select the most interesting ones. You can also see what matches are coming up and jump to a page for tweets about each particular game where you can easily follow and join in the banter. On the flip slide, the constant flow of information on Twitter is guaranteed to contain spoilers, so if you’re recording games to watch later, it’s probably best to abandon Twitter for a while.
Visa has put together a great solution for following your favorite teams via Facebook. When you choose to follow teams and matches, you can invite friends to an event page where your customized group shares comments and media. And of course you’ve got the full day-by-day schedule with live updates, as well as a video of the “worldwide goal cheer.” As an expat the event function is particularly appealing, as it’s a great way for me to root for the (former) home team with friends despite the distance.
When they aren’t busy filing ridiculous lawsuits, FIFA (sponsored by McDonalds) is running one of the best fantasy tournaments. You’ve got 140 credits in the bank and all the players in the tournament to choose from. Put your squad together and compete for your piece of the glory.
Do a little competing of your own with this fun football trivia app. In a creative twist on the regular old trivia contest, with this app you take the role of a team on the road to World Cup glory, advancing as you get questions right. It’s the perfect way to overcome halftime boredom and learn a thing or two about the tournament at the same time.
If you’ve got any other favorites that you’re horrified I missed, give a shout below.
Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.
Recent efforts show that marketing success with this new tech is well within reach
The challenge of using new technology in marketing is numbing yourself to the novelty of it and finding a genuinely good idea. And though most fail, a few succeed brilliantly. We’ve been looking to use augmented reality in an upcoming project and did some research to see what has already been done. What we found were some amazing applications that solve the target’s needs, while wowing them with shiny things at the same time.
Here are the best campaigns we’ve come across and why they were a success. Maybe they’ll inspire you to come up with some brilliant applications of your own that you didn’t even realize were possible.
Slap a virtual watch on your wrist So you’re thinking of dropping a chunk of change on a new watch, but not quite convinced it will look as dashing on your wrist as you imagine. Why not try on a digital model first? Tissot is betting you’ll want to take their new range for a test drive. It starts with a paper watch you cut out from their magazine ads (you can also download it from the site). You put the paper watch around your wrist, go to the Tissot site to download the software and hold it up to your webcam. You then see a 3D model wrapped around your wrist. You can cycle through the new range and even test out some the watches’ features. It’s extremely cool, has drawn loads of media attention and fills the need of potential buyers to try out a watch before buying beautifully.
The dude is unsettlingly devoid of emotion, but the watch is nifty
Take a BMW for a spin on your desktop (the wooden one) They could have just gone with creating a nifty 3D pop-up model (like Mini did), but for the Z4, BMW kicked it up a notch and created art. Or rather, they let you create art. Using a simple printout, a Z4 pops onto your desk and you can drive it around, leaving colorful tire tracks in your wake. When your street art is complete, you can save and share it via YouTube or Facebook with one click, thus expanding the campaign's footprint and making it spread organically simply by virtue of being fun and drawing fans more intimately into the BMW experience.
Such pretty donuts. Mmmmm....donuts.
Explore the 3D world on your tongue Since augmented reality springs to life just by using a simple pattern, you can slip it into almost anything. Even the tongue of your shoe. Adidas has created a 3D city (complete with the Death Star) that springs to life when you go to their website and hold the shoe up to your webcam. You can then navigate the city and play games using the shoe as a controller. It’s pretty dang cool and adds a unique selling point for their sneakers in an overcrowded market. The brilliance of the idea is that it adds a whole new digital dimension into the product itself, instead of creating a one-off gimmick that’s glanced at and forgotten. This way, the 3D world is always on the tip of your tongue. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
3D city! Storm troopers! Lasers! Overstimulation!
Enroll in alien police academy The film District 9 used a highly interactive augmented reality app to spread awareness and deepen fans’ experience of the sci-fi world. By visiting the website for Multi National United, the fictional government organization in charge of policing Earth’s alien inhabitants, you can go through an augmented reality training simulation on how to deal with day-to-day tasks, like non-human arrest and shooting at monsters. The campaign is a clever take on the film world and adds depth to the story, increasing viewers immersion and extending engagement beyond the cinema.
Working for the man is fun when they give you a machine gun.
Get your own mud soccer cheerleader In the most ambitious campaign I came across, UK brand Dairy Crest have set up an elaborate mud soccer contest. In order to win a slot for you and 5 friends in the Frijj Swamp Soccer World Cup 2010, complete with your own Swamp Soccerettes cheering your team on, users hold up a Frijj bottle in front of their webcam to enter a real-time environment. Oh, and a swamp soccerette crawls out of the bottle and does a cheer for you. The campaign cleverly capitalizes on the World Cup fever among its target and encourages them to get involved in a footie tournament of their own while their blood is boiling for some action. Plus, it’s so quirky you can’t resist seeking out more info to see if it’s real.
The connection between mud and milk is left mysteriously unsaid
Inspired yet? If so, check out this article for some great practical tips on creating an augmented reality campaign before you get started. And if you’ve seen any other great augmented reality campaigns, share them in the comments section below.
Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.
With the impending international release of the iPad (May 28th) and over a million already sold in the US, the adoption of the platform is in full swing. And that of course means the new apps are flying fast – over 4,800 are available already. If you ask us, a smooth Twitter app plays a big part in the iPad’s usefulness. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay for the majority of these apps. Of the Twitter apps we found, only one was free, but none was more than $5. These are the early days of iPad development and some of the apps clearly aren’t 100% there yet. With a few more revisions, all of these apps should be outstanding. As it stands now, they’re all pretty good solutions, but some have more problems than others.
TweetDeck for iPad (Price: free) - The transition to the iPad has been an easy one for the master of the desktop Twitter apps. All the features we love in the desktop app are available here including easy to navigate columns, multiple account support, photo sharing, and all the others we’ve come to rely on. It’s the best of the free Twitter apps.
Twitterific for iPad (Price: free; $4.99 for Pro account) - Twitterific Pro is the best iPad Twitter application we tried. The switch between portrait and landscape view is fluid, and even the free version has all the basics you need like being able to reply, re-tweet, DM and more. The $5 upgrade to Pro lets you add multiple Twitter accounts and remove the ads. It may not be free like Tweetdeck, but the small cost is worth it for the better functionality.
Twitepad (Price: $1.99) - For $3 less than Twitterific and Twittelator, Twitepad gives you most of the same functionality: multiple Twitter accounts, multiple columns, bit.ly stats and instapaper support. But you get what you pay for as it’s a little buggy, which is the only thing that keeps us from strongly recommending it. They have fixed a few of the bugs but it needs another round or two before it’s as good a tool as its competitors.
TwitRocker (Price: $4.99) - TwitRocker is another great app that features all the bells and whistles you need. With bit.ly URL shortening, multiple account support, OAuth security, search functions, list imports and all the basics such as retweeting, direct messages, and following/unfollowing people, TwitRocker truly does rock Twitter for the iPad. It’s a solid choice, but if you’re going to pay $5 for your app we’d still recommend Twitterific.
Twittelator for iPad (Price: $4.99) - Coming in at the more expensive level, Twittelator is easy to navigate and has great customization options. But $5 is expensive for an app, so it better work. With slow load times, problems switching from landscape to portrait mode and missing some of the iPhone features, Twittelator isn’t quite worth the price tag. Give this one a pass until it goes through a couple of revisions to work out the kinks. Once it does, it has the potential to be a great app.
Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013 at 11:37AM 
What do you call an online campaign that is centered around a game or contest? You guessed it: “Gampaign”. Today we launched our latest game, “Search Party”, for our fashion client Napapijri. The premise is simple: While shooting their Fall/Winter collection in Iceland, they left 3 bags behind. Create a search party and find the bag using an interactive map and you could win tickets for 4 to Iceland. ;)
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