We Are Social London have launched the Red Bull ‘Instagram Your Inspiration’ campaign and it’s an important milestone for us, as we launch the first ever We Are Social designed billboards.

For those who missed our last blog post about the campaign, here’s some background. To celebrate the launch of Red Bull Editions, we’ve been asking people from all over the country to Instagram inspirational shots featuring red, blue or silver (the colours of the new Red Bull Editions) to @RedBullUK using the hashtags #rededitionplease, #silvereditionplease and #blueeditionplease.

The response has been incredible – we’ve been astounded by the volume and quality of the submissions we’ve seen so far. It’s massively exciting for us to know that across London, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and Sheffield, passers-by will see a celebration of some of the amazing shots we’ve received. It’s also pretty special to see our campaign blown up on posters too (hey, even we need a break from our screens now and then).

If you’re a budding Instagrammer or you know someone that loves sharing their snaps on the platform, there’s still plenty of time to get involved. If you’re UK based and your Instagram makes it into the Gallery you instantly qualify to try a can of Red Bull Editions, available until early May. If you can get your entry to us by Monday next week you might even be featured on our next round of posters.

Get inspired before you shoot over at redsilverblue.redbull.co.uk. And when you’re ready, follow the instructions below – and happy snapping. Just no boring food photos. And don’t even think about sending us pictures of your cat…

Australia first for mobile payments
Mobile money is the next big battleground, with the industry set to generate $A271.9 billion by 2018, up from just $A13 billion in 2013.

With competing products from PayPal and Square already in market in other territories, MasterCard have announced a new digital payment system – MasterPass – set to launch first in Australia by the end of March before expanding to other markets.

MasterPass works with a wide variety of devices, including smartphones, and stores customers’ banking and personal information in the cloud. Shoppers will be able to use MasterPass on the web without having to key in their bank information and delivery address for each purchase, and by waving a smartphone equipped with Near Field Communications technology near a special reader.

So it looks like for the at times woeful eCommerce offering in Australia, there’s MasterPass. For everything else, there’s cash.

The internet’s importance in product purchase decisions
Consumers are more likely to purchase a new product after reading about it on the internet, according to Nielsen research into those with online access. The extent to which this is the case varies by product category; electronics are the highest, with 81% of those surveyed answering that the internet affects their purchasing decisions. Social media plays a large role in this, as 30% stated social channels would influence their decision and 27% took into account content posted on video-sharing channels.

The UK spends more time online than the rest of Europe
The amount of time spent online has increased by 5% throughout Europe to an average of 26.9 hours per person over the month. The UK had the highest overall figure of 37.3 hours, but the most growth was shown by Belgium, whose 22.4 hours showed an increase of 2 hours since this time last year.

Mobile and social leading shift to digital marketing
A shift is being shown from traditional to digital media, with mobile and social leading the way. At the same time as 1 in 3 marketers intend to decrease budgets in print media, 76% are looking to increase their social budgets.

Facebook integrates free calls to iOS app in US & Canada
Whilst users in North America have for some time been able to make free calls over the Internet through Facebook’s messenger app, the network has last week updated its main iOS app to integrate the service. The new app also boasts other changes, including more visible buttons for liking, commenting on or sharing content.

Bugs have been misrepresenting Facebook reach for months
Facebook admitted on Friday that bugs have been leading to erroneously low figures for page reach over the past few months. When updating their mobile apps in August and December, Facebook tried to increase speed by reducing the necessary amount of information sent when displaying news feed stories. However, one thing that was removed ended up being the marker used by Page Insights to measure reach, resulting in reach figures coming out lower than they should have. The bug has been fixed and figures should be back to normal from today. It remains to be seen if this explains the full extent of the decrease in reach we exposed in November.

Facebook update Offers product
Facebook have made a couple of important changes to their ‘Offers’ product. Previously, the only option for users was to click the ‘Get Offer’ button to instantly redeem it, which would in turn automatically generate a story on friends’ news feeds. The first change means that there are now two different options: it is possible either to ‘Shop Now’ or ‘Remind Me’, increasing the flexibility of Facebook offers. Beyond this, users can now choose whether or not to share the story with friends. Combined, these look set to increase the usability of ‘Offers’ and potentially increase the number of users taking advantage of the feature.

Facebook looking to match in-store purchases to advertising
Facebook are to partner with data companies such as Epsilon, Acxiom and Datalogix to match in-store loyalty card purchases with individual Facebook profiles through their email addresses or phone numbers. The move would, in theory, allow marketers to target Facebook ads to those that have purchased relevant products in the recent past.

Facebook events get cover photos
In place of the thumbnails they had before, cover photos are now available for Facebook events. Unlike pages and profiles, though, this is the only image they will be allowed; events will simply have the large banner at the top, but no profile picture.

Brands increasingly taking to Instagram
Some impressive figures have this week been released about Instagram: 59% of the world’s top brands are now taking advantage of its massive potential audience, which includes 90 million monthly active users, 40 million photos per day and 8,500 likes per second. The extent of brands’ adoption of the network is shown in the graph below:

Sports giant adidas (and We Are Social client) has been highlighted as one of the most successful brands on the network, having managed to double its follower numbers to almost 150,000 under 3 months, averaging over 5,000 comments across 49 quarterly updates.

Twitter launches new ads API
Twitter have officially launched their new ads API, which allows marketers to purchase adverts from within the dashboards they use to manage their social platforms. This will allow brands to run adverts on the network more easily and it will be interesting to see how this affects the number and nature of Twitter ads. One fear is that the number will rapidly increase, a concern that Twitter have quickly looked to waylay, arguing that the changes will simply affect ease for advertisers, not volume. One thing that will be affected, though, is the extent to which ads can be targeted; marketers will now be able to create their own custom audiences.

Twitter testing new way to generate leads
Twitter are testing a new addition to their ‘cards’ functionality; a way for brands to create leads. It will work as shown below in a tweet from Twitter themselves about their small business guide; when clicking on the link, a button appears below saying “get it now” . It will be interesting to see if the system, which is currently still being tested, is rolled out further.

Twitter to add language and importance information to API metadata
Twitter is set to introduce two new features to its existing API metadata. The first allows identification of the language a tweet was sent in, which will be important for translation and filtering. The second allows yet further filtering, this time by importance – or what Twitter considers ‘high value’ tweets. Of the two features, this is set to be the most exciting, especially for brands, who can use the tool to better assess their own performance on the network.

Burger King & Jeep’s Twitter accounts hacked, MTV fake their own hack
This week has been a big one for social media disasters, most notably after thehacking of Burger King and Jeep’s Twitter feeds, as well as MTV ‘fake hacking’ themselves. Obviously, hacks can have hugely negative consequences if left unresolved, but We Are Social’s own Jim Coleman has pointed out some of the positives; notably, they attract a lot of attention. Moreover, they need not be too damaging if dealt with promptly and humorously. Burger King at least did the latter of these fairly well. Although their response could perhaps have been speedier, the lighthearted response, when it did arrive, was amusing and appropriate.

Interesting day here at BURGER KING®, but we’re back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!

— BurgerKing (@BurgerKing) February 19, 2013

The incidents have sparked debate about Twitter’s treatment of brands, with only one type of account for brands with thousands of followers and individuals with very few. In particular, there have been calls for increased security and the introduction of two-factor authentication. Pinterest valued at $2.5 billion after $200 million funding round As its latest round of funding brought in $200 million, Pinterest has attained a valuation of $2.5 billion. The image-sharing platform has claimed that the money will be invested in product development, international expansion and acquisitions, with CEO Ben Silbermann stating:

Our focus is on helping millions of people discover things they love and get inspiration to go do those things in their life. This investment gives us more resources to help realize that vision.

Social media at the Oscars The Oscars last night were a hotbed for real-time marketing, following on from a similar showing at the Superbowl a few weeks ago. As stars walked down the red carpet, one actress was particularly popular on Twitter; for a time, #JessicaChastain was the second highest trending topic after #Oscars2013. Marketers took advantage of this, with Samsung, American Express, Royal Carribbean, Michaels Stores, Dell and Sprint amongst the many brands who purchased promoted tweets for the topics surrounding said actress. However, it is likely that, rather than being true examples of real-time purchasing, these tweets were purchased beforehand, based on forethought into the types of topics likely to trend. Oreo, heroes of RTM at the Superbowl, attempted a similar tactic again, this time posting four tweets related to relevant films, including one about the night’s fashion with a reference to zombie show ‘The Walking Dead’:

Do #zombies walk the Red Carpet? ow.ly/i/1zS4b — Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 25, 2013

They also used the motion capabilities of twitpics, as can be seen in their James Bond tweet. Interestingly, none of these tweets received quite the same about of interaction as their Superbowl tweet, displaying how real-time marketing depends in large part on being truly reactive, as the blackout tweet was to a greater extent than last night’s.Another brand experimenting during the event was Smart Car, who posted a number of miniature takes on various award winners through Twitter’s Vine app, including the follow for ‘best actor’:

He wrapped himself in a nation’s fate. Like a custom smart wrap…but for the soul. Our Best Actor #Oscars t… vine.co/v/bgghz0M5IhU — Official smart USA(@smartcarusa) February 25, 2013

They have since made it clear that they had pre-recorded videos for every possible winner and have been posting the runners up throughout the day. Dulux’s real-time(ish) marketing at the Brit Awards With so much focus on real-time marketing at various big American events, UK brands are looking to get in on the act, too. A lot has been made of the below Dulux tweet, in relation to the Damien Hirst designed award statuette. However, whilst it may be an interesting way of producing topical content around paint, not normally known as the most exciting of products, the real-time element has been largely overblown. In fact, the nature of the statue had been known for months before the awards, meaning that this wasn’t really ‘real-time’ at all. A nice update, yes, but not in fact what has been described as an ‘Oreo moment’.

Looks like Damien Hirst may have used some of our favourites on the #BRITs2013 award! twitpic.com/c5f6nr

— Dulux (@duluxuk) February 20, 2013

Ford give away 100 cars to bloggers and influencers
In a ‘social remix’ of their famous 2009 ‘Fiesta Movement’ campaign, Ford are giving away 100 of the vehicles to bloggers and online influencers, including celebrities, in exchange for their documenting the experience. The cars will be entirely free for six months, including petrol, parking and insurance in exchange for using content, which will be used by Ford across their social channels, as well as in traditional media, such as print and television.

YSL launch new ‘Radiance’ range with Facebook app
Yves Saint Laurent are celebrating the launch of their new ‘Radiance’ range with a Facebook app, which allows users to manipulate photos as if by using the new products. Users can upload a photo, which they can then alter by ‘glow’ and ‘vitality’, then share. Users can also download a voucher for a two-week free trial of any two products from the range.

Bulmers and We Are Social launch new flavours through social
Here at We Are Social, we’ve recently produced a campaign to launch two new flavours of Bulmers cider: Bold Black Cherry and Pressed Red Grape. The ‘try it first’ Facebook app will allow fans to enter for the chance to be one of the lucky few who get to try the flavour before everyone else. Key Twitter influencers have also been approached to be amongst the initial group.

This week; Beyonce, a space monkey and the kids of the future.

It’s that time of the week again, take a peek at this week according to the internet.

SWISH: Is this the next Michael Jordan?

OMG: The Gangnam Style baby.

FAIL: The top Tweets from the Superbowl black out.

CELEBRATED: Facebook turns 9 years old and the first 25 members are recognised.

NAILED IT: Beyonce steals the show at this year’s Superbowl.

PEP TALK: First Michael Jordan…now the next President?

HOAXED: Did Iran do the old switcheroo on their first ever space monkey?

SMILE: Hard and fast rules for taking your selfies.

20SOMETHING: Any 20 year olds out there feeling like this?

DOGTASTIC: Teen swimmer always brings four-legged life preserver.

(Image via)

Marketing magazine recently published an article from me on rethinking social strategy. They’ve been kind enough to let us reproduce it in full below:

In Rocky, a mumbling underdog boxer goes toe-to-toe with a big-talking, well-funded opponent by using unorthodox training methods designed to help him go the distance with the best fighter in the world.

Social media was Rocky a couple of years ago. It allowed the smaller, creative brands to compete with the multi-nationals and their colossal traditional media budgets.

In Rocky II, an injured Rocky has to learn to fight left-handed in order to take on Apollo Creed in a rematch. He adapts to his limitations, evolves, confounding his opponent and ultimately beating him.

Social media was Rocky II about a year ago. Brands who had adapted and evolved quickly were able to gain traction by blindsiding competitors with huge gains in social, ultimately beating bigger, better funded brands in their industry.

Right now, social media is somewhere around the second act of Rocky III.

In that film, a complacent Rocky, a long-time world champion who has learned to rest on his laurels, is soundly battered in the ring by a younger, faster, stronger, tougher, meaner opponent – aptly named ‘Clubber’.

As more brands pour money into Facebook, as the bigger brands get better at social, as your radical approach turns into complacency, you’re now finding it harder and harder to cut through, to grow your followers, to achieve high engagement.

In all likelihood you’re being beaten, and it isn’t pretty. Something has to change.

Back to the film. Shell-shocked, Rocky completely rebuilds himself as a fighter. He starts from scratch, re-thinking his entire strategy, re-learning how to box in a way that will let him compete.

In the rematch, a leaner, fitter, faster Rocky lets his opponent hit him. And then he lets him hit him some more. He lets his opponent concentrate all his energy on hitting him hard for long enough that the bigger, stronger fighter tires himself out.

And then Rocky attacks. He hits Clubber hard when he least expects it, and beats him convincingly.

Let them concentrate on Facebook. Let them take it, they can have it. When they’re not looking, hit them from different angles, from different platforms. Hit them hard.

You need a Facebook page like you need a .com, but Facebook is not a social strategy.

There are over five million brands on Facebook, and counting. You can’t win at Facebook. But you can still win at social.

The 2012 Presidential Election is an excellent example. Barack Obama didn’t win by going after the big majority where he would have probably lost, he won by gaining huge percentages among minority groups – Mitt Romney largely ignored or insulted these groups, he didn’t think he needed them, and it probably cost him the election.

Many brands are doing this exact thing right now in social. Consolidating their foothold in Facebook, relying on the majority user base for engagement and return on investment.

Change your approach. Go after the small percentages, target niches.

Look at Tumblr, 80 million blogs worldwide, more than WordPress, and serving more than 20 billion page impressions per month, more than Wikipedia. Part blog platform, part social network, the potential for great content to go viral is huge.

Look at Pinterest, the fastest growing website in history. Look at Twitter. Look at Instagram.

Sure Facebook has over 11 million users in Australia, and Tumblr only has three million, but add that to the three million on Twitter, the half a million on Instagram and the half a million on Pinterest and those percentages start to add up.

You’re not going to win by trying the same old tactics, or by fighting competitors on their terms. You’re going to win by evolving, by changing tack, by trying something new.

Ultimately, you’re going to win by thinking outside Facebook.

There are exciting times ahead. Social media is only a few years old. New platforms are emerging all the time, each with unique opportunities and user bases, each allowing the savvy brand to refresh their strategy, to change, to adapt.

Each offering another chance to win.

If the coming year brings as many changes as the last, by the end of 2013 we’ll be in the middle of Rocky IV, training in the Russian wilderness trying to work out a way to beat an unstoppable opponent.

Forgive the analogy. My point is that as long as there are new platforms and new opportunities, there will always be a way for you to write your own underdog story with social media.

Whether you decide to get in the ring or not is up to you.

Like an insane Rebecca Black fan, we’re all about Friday.

To celebrate, here’s a list of things that are funnier, cuter and more disturbing than a teen pop sensation;

INTERVIEWED: Neil Armstrong before he died, obvs.

INTERACTIVE: Play bongos with Old Spice Guy’s pecs.

OBAMA’D: Reddit, when POTUS dropped in for an AMA.

LEGITIMATE: Stinging parody ad for rape as contraception.

TWEETED: Clint Eastwood’s chair rant gets obligatory parody.

HIPSTERS: These toddlers are way too cool.

EVACUATED: Little girl fleeing hurricane leaves rules for her soft-toys.

WARHOLED: Campbell’s finally selling designer soup cans.

CURIOUS: Mars rover snaps the red planet in HD.

FUSSY: Bentley the puppy does not agree with you filming him.

(Image via)

In a week where we lost the Olympics but gained Big Brother, perhaps you need some lulz more than ever.

Thankfully, this is the week according to the internet…

EXPLAINED: The Internet, by the year 1995.

HEARD: Somebody I Used To Know covers remixed by Gotye.

OFFICIAL: F-bomb now a word.

SEEN: Sexy insurance advert subtext spotted by Facebook.

COVERED: Baby got Back, as sung by the movies.

OFFERED: Entire Tuscan village up for grabs.

TALENTED: This goddamn adorable kitty.

WHAT: Is this Instagram map shit?

BACK: Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Last Stand.

RATED: This guy should review all the food. UPDATED: Now with autotune!

(Image above via. Yes it’s a real book)

Friday is upon us like a Gold-medal, a reward for making it through the working week.

So crank up the tunes, countdown the hours, and catch up on the week according to the internet;

STREAMED: Forget the Olympics. Watch these Corgi puppies 24/7.

BROADCAST: London 2012 volunteer with a megaphone is hilarious.

BIFFLES: Anzac the Kangaroo and Peggy the Wombat are pouch-buds fo’ life.

REPLACED: All the babies in your newsfeed. With bacon.

CASHED: Brad Pitt’s Killing Them Softly has an awesome soundtrack.

EFRONED: Nicole Kidman gets sweaty with Zach in The Paperboy trailer.

SKYPED: Paranormal Activity 4 will have you signing off video chat. Forever.

PLAYED: This Breaking Bad game lets you have fun in the kitchen. With crystal meth.

QUOTED: Gore Vidal was funnier than you. RIP.

FOUND: A home for puppies Winston and Bruce… with your help!

(Image above via Reddit - Do something nice for someone this weekend!)