The recent US Presidential campaign has yielded an unusual outcome. A play by play lesson in Social Media marketing. Many of the techniques and insights identified in the article by Edelman below, are fully applicable to the clients and brands we work with on a daily basis. Obama's Social Media Toolkit

Here’s the new spot from Fallon London for Cadbury - and another simple equation for you.

fun idea + easily messed with = spreadable media

I’m picking the community mashups from this are going to be pretty amusing!

  One of the many shifts we are seeing globally is an expanded individual awareness and sense of responsibility for social and environmental issues.  Of course there have always been groups of people trying to do good but something I’ve noticed occurring more and more is individual empowerment. A great example of how a business has tapped into what is a latent desire for most of us to give back where we can, is this company - Ark, a clothing label that encourages its wearers to “be kind”. ARK, an acronym for Acts of Random Kindness asks its customers to perform one act of kindness every time they put on their clothing.   “Buy someone a coffee, give up your seat on the bus, help a drunk home.” They also accept submissions for bigger ideas that they’ll support as a business. I absolutely love this idea, and really hope these guys go well.

  In an earlier post I wrote about a shift in consumer thinking.  A shift from materialism towards experientialism.  In that post I also touched on social currency, specifically around what brands needed to do in order to play a role in the social networking environment. In simple terms, social currency is a commodity used to assist people make new or nourish existing personal network connections.  That commodity might be a news item, a joke, an interesting video, anything really.  Anything that has value to the recipient is valid social currency and is therefore likely to be shared or spread throughout a network. But just like in the finance markets, not every dollar is created equally and brands shouldn’t trade in weak currency. 

The easiest way to measure the strength of your currency is to gauge how well it has spread.  Items that have propagated throughout the network deeply, are obviously more highly valued than items that do not. So the question is, if brands wish to participate in social networks by creating spreadable content - is there a framework on which to base creative or application development to ensure campaign efficacy?

I read David Bodanis’ book E = MC² a few years back and was blown away by how much scientific history could be distilled down into such a simple equation.  Its elegance is inarguable and serves as the inspiration for the following {tongue_firmly_in_cheek}.

social currency (value)  = passion x insight x relevance

Actual measurement (efficacy) has to be done after the fact of course, but I believe that by focusing on the three variables of passion, insight and relevance we can ensure that we are creating campaigns that will genuinely add value to our customers’ network connections.

Passion

Without passion, content loses authenticity.  Without authenticity there can be no credibility.  Without credibility...well you get it.  Just because the media is cheap doesn’t mean you should accept sub-standard ideas.  And for the same reason why scrimp on production quality?  The old adage - you get out what you put in, inevitably still applies.  

Insight

Without insight, it’s likely that whatever you deliver, will be in the me-too category and will have a much harder job of cutting through the clutter.  It’s therefore important to understand exactly what an insight is, or rather what it needs to be in order to have value.   I found a great post at adliterate that speaks of an insight being a revelation, not merely the raw product of research. The post states that,

An insight is an astonishing disclosure about real people, the brands they use, or the world they live in.

It’s also important to realise that insights are semi-durable, i.e. they don’t last forever and importantly, you won’t own them past your first campaign.  It’s therefore critically important to keep dialogue going in order to pick up on shifts in thinking or reactions to environmental change i.e. to discover new insights!

Relevance

Relevance is closely tied to insight, I think of it as the cumulative sum of all customer knowledge as currently expressed by the brand. If insight keeps you at the edge of your game, relevance ensures you’re on the right playing field.  It’s your right to be there. If you can’t demonstrate that your brand is relevant, then your clever content will be wasted.  Don’t get me wrong, if it’s really clever it may well get initial views, however without relevance it will have little impact as a marketing tool.

I put together the quick video above to showcase www.secrettweet.com, a site that allows visitors to anonymously micro-blog their innermost thoughts onto Twitter. I’m not entirely sure what makes this site so fascinating, perhaps it’s simply a case of feeling closer to people through the honesty of their words. A big thank you to Chris Blake for the music - a track called Mean from his album Wave.  It’s available on iTunes along with his new EP - Tetris.

  Tired of all those Facebook apps that want you to invite 6 friends blah, blah, blah.  Well what about a Facebook application that encourages you to ditch your friends for material gain? I wrote an earlier post about social currency on-line and this just turned it all on its head - in a very funny way.  Burger King’s Facebook application gives away a free Whopper for every 10 friends you ditch.  Check it out at Whopper Sacrifice. Disturbingly funny - hungry anyone?

  Sometimes you’re just in the right place at the right time.  To be a part of something new, something genuinely inspiring. That happened to me yesterday as my twitterstream flowed by on-screen.  An intriguing request for assistance popped up from David Armano - that’s @Armano in twitterland.   “Hey everyone. I am going to need a very BIG favor from you. It’s going to be asking a lot. I’ll let you know more very soon.” A short while later he followed up with a link to his blog with a request to help a young family in a difficult situation.  

What happened next was nothing short of remarkable. Over the next 24 hours David’s network went absolutely nuts raising nearly US$15,000 in the aid of a family none of us knew. A great article here from Steve Hall on the whole thing. posted by: Rowan Schaaf

One of my creative director’s pet gripes is a campaign directive to “add a viral component”.  It’s right up there with the afterthought of tacking a website onto an already fully formed above the line campaign with no thought as to how digital could have added to the creative concept up front. Found this video and post on Faris Yakob’s blog which quite brilliantly sums it all up.

The video above was made by Mauricio and Ricardo Justus for a panel at FOE3 - it is a mash up made from a Brazilian film called Tropa De Elite, a film which was embraced and spread by remix culture.