8 out of 10 Australian users connect with brands
According to eMarketer, this year 11.4 million people in Australia - more than half of the population - will be social network users. And that’s not all. According to a December 2012 survey from Latitude Insights and The Social Hatch, 82% of social media users had connected with a brand via a social site.

On Facebook nearly three out of 10 users reported connecting with 11 or more brands.

Half of Australia’s social brands don’t talk to customers
A recent survey has shown that of the ASX100 companies, only 50% are using social media to talk to their customers. Telstra, Coca Cola and Woolworths have more than 340,000 Facebook fans each, but at the time of checking, none of the companies had responded to any of the last of 10 posts on their timelines according to The Australian.

Retailers Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi have disabled comments on their Facebook pages.

With Australians being some of the most brand friendly social media users in the world (see above article), not engaging these users in conversation or actively listening and creating a dialogue is not just a missed opportunity, but a misunderstanding of the role of social media in marketing.

Social is a conversation. If you want to talk more about how you can be part of the conversation, then let’s chat.

Facebook report Q1 earnings & increase in monthly active users
Facebook has reported its earnings for Q1 2013, announcing revenue of $1.45bn, up 38% from Q1 2012. 85% of total revenue came from advertising, amounting to $1.25bn, up 43% from Q1 2012.

The network simultaneously noted an increase in Monthly Active Users (MAUs). While growth slowed down in markets like the US, Canada and Europe, MAUs were up from 901 million in Q1 2012 to 1.1bn a year later, while Daily Active Users (DAUs) increased from 526 million to 665 million in the same period.

A great deal of this growth was down to mobile. Q1 2013 saw 751 million mobile MAUs compared to 488 million the year before, while there are now 189 million Mobile Only MAUs.

Twitter appoints Cynthia Gaylor as head of corporate development
Twitter has fuelled rumours of plans for an IPO with the appointment of ex-Morgan Stanley investment banker Cynthia Gaylor, who worked on the public offerings of Facebook, LinkedIn and Zynga. In what was her first ever tweet, she said:

@amac @twitter @jess look forward to joining and focusing on M&A + strategy. pointed north … let the migration begin!

— cynthia gaylor (@cynthiag) May 2, 2013

Twitter was valued at $9bn after an offer to staff in January and is set to hit global ad revenue of $1bn by 2014. This, along with the above appointment, has led to speculation by The New York Times that “next big step is to go public on the stock market, and insiders say the current goal is to have an initial public offering in 2014″.

Twitter ads now available to all US users
Twitter’s self-serve ads interface, launched in March 2012, is now available to all US users. Previously accessible only by invite, Twitter has used the period to improve on a number of features, from targeting to reporting, and decided to open the self-serve platform to everyone in the US. All you need to do to gain access is visit the page at business.twitter.com and answer a few questions. There has been concern that the increased demand will lead to either a boost in the number of ads appearing in users’ streams, or the price of ads. Russ Laraway, senior director of small- and medium-sized business at Twitter, has stated that “There will be no change in the frequency with which ads show up in timelines”, though it is not clear how price will be affected.

‘Photos of You’ on Instagram
Instagram has launched ‘Photos of You’, which essentially allows Facebook-style tagging of people and brands in photos. Previously, users would @-mention one another, as if on Twitter, to perform a similar function. This form of tagging comes with another key feature: it makes a full archive of all photos someone has been tagged in that appear on that user’s profile, assuming they have given permission. To prevent privacy complaints, Instagram has built controls that allow manual selection of which photos are visible to others. The feature looks to foster increased communication between individuals, but may also be beneficial for brands to interact with each other, as well as influencers with high follower counts and normal users.

Twitter updates Vine for iOS
Twitter has produced a couple of updates for the Vine iOS app, including the ability to shoot with the front-facing camera and tag others in posts. Where it was previously only possible to shoot with the camera on the back of the phone, the screenshot below displays a small button in the bottom left of the screen that allows switching between cameras. You can also see that @-mentioning is set to work much like on Twitter, Vine’s parent platform.

Path exceeds 10 million users
Path, the social network that limits you to 150 friends, has exceeded 10 million users for the first time. After reaching 2 million in Feb 2012 and 3 million in June 2012, the figure sees a large milestone for the platform. They’ve since added a search feature in December and released version 3.0 in March this year, which supported messaging. While the number of registered users is an impressive start for Path, it will be interesting to examine how many active users they manage to retain.

Where does brands’ Pinterest engagement come from?
According to a study by Digitas and Curalate, 30% of engagement on Pinterest comes from brand accounts. The remaining 70% comes from users pinning content from outside of brands’ Pinterest accounts.

J.C. Penney asks fans to come back on social media
Last year, J.C. Penney decided to get rid of sales and coupons, focussing instead on regular, low prices. The move was a disaster and they’ve recently taken to social media in an attempt to remedy it. They took to Twitter with the hashtag #jcplistens, whereby fans were asked which changes should be kept and which reversed. The move is a nice example of a brand using social media honestly, in an attempt to connect with fans. It will be interesting to see if it helps their ailing figures.

Mountain Dew purchases promoted tweets for apology
Another example of a big brand mistake was Mountain Dew’s ‘Felicia the Goat’ advert, which was criticised as both racist and misogynistic. Last week, they purchased promoted tweets to expand the reach of their apology, letting users know that they had pulled the advert. It’s an interesting idea: on the one hand, it allows the apology to be seen by as many people as possible. However, it also provides potentially unnecessary promotion to the original issue.

Lowe’s post six-second tips on Vine
Lots of brands are using Vine. Some are doing it well, some aren’t. Hardware storeLowe’s has strongly entered the former camp with their latest campaign, using Vine to post six-second home improvement tips. The medium brings to life content that is relevant but not necessarily exciting, while the tips themselves are useful, not an unnecessary experiment with a new medium. As such, the form and content compliment one another perfectly.

Stripped screw? No problem, just use a rubber band. #lowesfixinsix #howto vine.co/v/bU61aqq2YOp

— Lowe’s (@Lowes) April 21, 2013

Any sticker peels right off when you use a hair dryer. #lowesfixinsix #tip #stopmotion vine.co/v/bPH2WPpnA7r

— Lowe’s (@Lowes) April 24, 2013

Red Bull’s ‘Imaginate’ Pinterest puzzles
Red Bull is asking fans to solve Pinterest puzzles based on stunts performed by trials cyclist Danny MacAskill. Six videos will be released, each showing a different trick, which fans must watch in order to solve a puzzle on Pinterest. This involves pinning content in the correct order to create an image of MacAskill. Those who do so correctly will be entered into a draw to win signed photos of the cyclist.

Hugh Jackman answers Wolverine questions
To promote the upcoming release of ‘The Wolverine’, in which he plays the title character, Hugh Jackman answered the Twitter questions of 11 fans in a series of YouTube videos. He also tweeted the answers and posted links to the videos from his official @RealHughJackman account. This is the latest in a series of social stunts around the film, including a 6-second ‘Tweaser’ released through Twitter’s Vine app.

This week; kitty exercising, the worlds best mum and Obama the movie. 

Sit back, relax and have a laugh at what’s going on this week on the Internet.

DELIGHTFUL: Cute babies in mugs.

CREEPY: One tiny hand.

RETWACT: A chance to retract a tweet.

TRIPPING: Taking screenshots to the next level.

ATMOSPHERIC: A sexy sax player gives the public a show.

MEOW: Sports balls replaced with cats.

PREMIERED: Spielberg presents ‘Obama’ the movie.

SUPERMUM: Artist draws super powered canines on her son’s lunch napkins.

SWEATY: Give your kitty some exercise.

BOOGIE: A bird with some serious moves.

(Image via)

The following article is syndicated from yesterday’s B&T article on the AP Twitter hacking scandal.

The article features We Are Social’s own Julian Ward who lays down insights and a few ideas on how to offset a potential crisis.

–

The hacking of Associated Press’ (AP) official Twitter feed last week was a sobering reminder of the unparalleled and unchecked power of the Twittersphere.

Last Tuesday a cyber hacking group known as The Syrian Electronic Army broke into AP’s account and posted a bogus Tweet declaring there had been explosions at the White House.

The Tweet, which claimed president Barack Obama had been injured in the attack, sent the stock market momentarily into freefall as Wall Street responded to the news.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped almost 150 points in a matter of seconds before bouncing back when traders realised the tweet was fake.

The event showcased the enormous degree of trust global corporations have put in the social network to deliver them true insights – a trust which is now in question. Twitter’s simplistic security measures clearly need to be addressed.

But it also threw the spotlight on the shortcomings of automated data monitoring services used by corporations and businesses the world over to gain real time insights, Julian Ward, MD of We Are Social told B&T.

“It probably wasn’t even people the hackers were targeting. The real target looked to be the automated monitoring services for social media and the news sites.

“Some of these services scan 50,000 news sources and millions of social media sites and profiles, sifting through the data in an attempt to make some sense of the mass of information.

“Whereas an agency like ours is looking for real insight and emerging issues to offset potential crisis, the trading world is looking to execute on relevant strings of words in a micro second, so effectively without human analysis and without time for intervention,” he said.

The Tweet, posted at 10:07am on the 23^rd of April, read: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured”.

According to Ward, the style and tone of the post was not typically ‘AP’. But data monitoring services don’t pick up nuances, and therein lies one of the greatest dangers of automated analytics.

“Questions have arisen around the unusual style of the news post, with it clearly not looking to blend in. It seemed to be a blatant attempt to trigger set up monitoring alerts which connected the string of keywords, packaged this as trading system data and delivered it in less than one thousandth of a second, triggering the algorithmic trading spiral – straight down,” said Ward.

“Access to this sort of data is incredibly powerful if you have the means to accurately interpret it. The scary side is the ease at which you could manipulate the systems in the trading domain.”

One of the major issues raised by the hacking has been Twitter’s lack of security.

According to international reports, Twitter is currently considering adding a two-step approval practice which would see Tweeters forced to log in with both their regular user name and password in addition to an extra code, which would be sent to a different device or email.

“Security is definitely an issue they are going to have to have a look it,” said Tommy Tudehope, social media strategist at Social@Ogilvy. “All organisations need to consider their security software and passwords and who has access to accounts. We know that hacking is on the rise and those who are engaged in hacking often have the best tools at their disposal and are pushing the boundaries every single day. So there is a case for increasing the security around social media tools.”

While Tudehhope believes stronger passwords might solve the problem – “ Many organisations still use the most simplistic password like ‘password’” he says – Ward believes the two step process has merit.

“Two step verification can help protect an account if a password is obtained,” he said. “It’s a simple enough approach that stops more basic attacks and means that dedicated hackers will need to have your physical phone or to have compromised the secondary device as well.

“The real world issue is many of the accounts that would be prime hacking targets would be using various management applications and possibly have multiple people contributing, so there are some obvious questions around practicality and whether this could or even would be used.”

And if not to protect reputation, publishers will no doubt be pressuring the social network to improve security to prevent severe legal ramifications from the distribution of false information.

Nick Economidis, an underwriter with Beazley, a financial-services company in London that sells data-breach insurance, told The Age at the time of the hacking:

‘‘A media publisher conceivably could be sued for negligence if things are published under their name that is not true and if they didn’t take reasonable steps to prevent the erroneous publication of information.

‘‘Some people may have lost money in the market today based on the news story. Those people may seek redress against the Associated Press.’’

The FBI is currently investigating the hackings.

This week; Evian babies, embarrassing dance floor moments and photos to make your heart melt. 

Lots in store for this week according to the Internet so don’t forget to check it out!

FUNKY: Evian babies are the cutest.

EMBARRASSING: Jimmy Kimmel’s Lie Witness News.

BOOM: Always wait for the drop. 

HAPPY DAYS: The wedding dress that cost only $36.

ENORMOUS: Stupidly tall bicycle.

TWITTING: The knitter stream.

PARALLEL: The longest car park in history.

TOO MUCH: Photos to make your heart melt.

VERSES: Game of Thrones vs Friends.

TYPICAL: Kids do the funniest things.

(Image via)

This week; the Internet does April Fools, Hadoken-ing versus Vader-ing and the most annoying teenager on Instagram. 

Have a look at what everyone’s talking about this week.

GENIUS: Arthur C. Clarke predicts the Internet in 1974.

EXPLODED: This guy doesn’t want anymore Peeps.

ABBREVIATED: Pay for vowels? April Fools from Twttr. 

LOATHED: Meet Lavish, the worst teenager on Instagram.  

HADOKEN-ING: Japan’s hottest new meme.

VADER-ING: Trying to out-do Hadoken-ing. 

EXCITED: Psyche yourself up for The Wolverine.

SURPRISE: YouTube is finally ready to select a winner.

FOUND: Disney Pixar are finally Finding Dory.

DANCE OFF: Beyonce battles her past selves for Pepsi.

(Image via)

YouTube hit the 1 billion a month unique users mark

Online video giant YouTube put their success into context for us last Wednesday, announcing their achievement of 1 billion unique users per month. This means “almost half of the people on the Internet visit the online site each month”. Looking specifically at Generation C (18-34 year olds), YouTube stated that this “demographic spend 74% more time watching YouTube on their smartphones now than they were last year”.

Facebook cover photo policy has been changed

The rule against page cover photos featuring a call to action, contact information, references to price or purchase information has been updated. Page owners now have more flexibility in terms of what they can include in their cover photo, however the no more than 20% text overlay rule still applies. The rule for cover photos and ad images are now consistent, “this is important as cover photos are beginning to be included in both organic and sponsored page-Like stories in News Feeds”.

Facebook to roll out its new commenting system

Facebook have been testing its new commenting system since November 2012, it “includes threaded conversations and a ranking algorithm meant to put the most relevant and high quality comments first”. The new updates will be available on an opt-in basis for all pages with more than 10,000 fans. Some of the key features of the new comments are the “option to reply to a specific comment and a ranking system that takes into account positive and negative signals, and connections”. Facebook are hoping the update will improve conversation management, enhancing the fans experience and public figure profiles.

Facebook to introduce Lookalike Audiences globally

Last week Facebook rolled out Lookalike Audiences to Power Editor accounts, this is a tool which helps advertisers target similar users “to those in their Custom Audience database”. Facebook reported that Lookalike Audiences have decreased cost per action and an online retailer experienced “lower costs per checkout when the Lookalike Audience feature was in limited beta”. To create Lookalike Audiences a list of first-party data must be uploaded, such as, email, phone number or user ID to create a Custom Audience. Facebook then uses algorithms to analyse the Custom Audience and produces a Lookalike Audience based on demographics, interests and what people are talking about.

iPhone users make calls using Facebook Messenger for free

Following on from its successful launch in the US and Canada, it is now possible for iPhone users in the UK to make calls to other Facebook Messenger users for free. You simply open the Facebook Messenger app, select the person you want to call and hit the ‘I’ button.

Happy 7th Birthday Twitter

Last week Twitter celebrated its 7th birthday – In the last seven years the social network has gained more than 200 million active users who create over 400 million Tweets each day. Twitter is now considered by most to be the go platform for the “lastest news, to exchange ideas and connect with people all in real time”. To celebrate this milestone, Twitter have made a video celebrating some of the many moments on Twitter so far, and a few of the UK’s best known Twitter personalities have been shouting about why they love Twitter so much.

Britney Spears is first to reach 6 million followers on Google+

Britney Spears has had the highest number of followers on Google+ since November 2011, and is now the first person to reach 6 million followers. According to Starcount, Lady Gaga is hot on her heels with a mere 100,000 followers seperating them.

Puma are paying for UGC

German sports giant, Puma, announced they’re trialing iPhone app, Foap. The new app allows users to upload photos to the platform and sell them to brands. Puma has asked Foap users to take photos in response to ‘Missions’ for its ‘Nature of Performance’ global campaign, the UGC purchased will promote the campaign across all social media channels. The ability to “create a library of content and achieve further engagement by getting users to rate the images” in Foap is one of the reasons Puma decided to use this platform.

Friendly Twitter war between Kit Kat and Oreo

A friendly twitter war can be fun and exciting for the brand and their followers, and this one is no exception:

A Twitter user tweets her two favourite chocolate brands…

@KITKAT respond with a game of noughts and crosses…

To which @oreo responded very cleverly…

Oreo triumphed over KitKat on this occasion, we’re look forward to the next round!

Does Twitter really have an official Australian presence?

Social media commentator David Cowling recently asked what’s wrong with the official @TwitterAU account, and it’s a question that’s gotten a lot of attention, if not a lot of official replies. Repeated @ tweets to the official account asking for the number of active users in Australia were met with no response. Although the official Twitter handle launched back in October 2012, and senior execs have made scoping visits, there’s little evidence that Twitter have any dedicated resource locally.

Latecomer to the Aussie music streaming scene: Songl

Streaming music service Songl actually launched in October last year, but is now being relaunched with a PR and social media campaign as well as a whole heap of exclusive celeb content and playlists (the first new one was created by Sir Bob Geldof). The streaming service offers a $12.99 subscription model as well as an ad-funded version. It’s also backed by Digital Music Distribution (DMD), Sony, Universal Music and Southern Cross Austereo; early reports indicate some major artists are missing.

Spotify and Rdio already feature great social integration – we’ll be watching to see how Songl make their mark in the crowded social landscape of music streaming.

Interactive website aims to help gambling addicts

With the help of McCann Melbourne, the Victorian Government has launched fightforyou.com.au, which will feature video diaries of people trying to control their gambling habits. The online support service asks people to take a 100 day challenge and friends, families and even complete strangers can use the site to post messages of support. Forums and live chat functionality is also offered.

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.