The Brighton & Hove Business Awards website updated and live Posted on 09.05.08
The second battle of who's-responsible-for-the-website Posted on 08.05.08
Why FAIL is viral Posted on 28.04.08
Justifying and planning a corporate blog Posted on 25.04.08
Building Micro Web Applications using WordPress Pages Posted on 25.04.08
More lovely marketing momentum from NixonMcInnes – check out where our comments are being published and where we have been getting out and about spreading the word of social media goodness.
Read more…
Ruth wrote this on 02.04.08 – 1 comment
It's filed in the Events & conferences, Marketing, NixonMcInnes, Press, Social media box
Note from the author: apologies if this post sounds like a Microsoft marketing campaign, but I am really excited about this technology!
Let’s say you have a website and you want to give your visitors the experience edge.
The media experience can be improved by using Microsoft Silverlight on your website. Some of the features include:
Some impressive examples can be found on the Silverlight website. Here’s a few from the top of my head:
Telmo wrote this on 18.03.08 – 33 comments
It's filed in the Design, Development, Marketing, User experience box
Recently I was on a train to Brighton, a bit bored and without juice in my laptop so I decided to go online via my mobile phone to check out the social media marketing goodness flowing from the NM towers blog.
I became increasingly frustrated by the tiny text and slow loading times. I thought that it would be a good time to release the mobile version of the site at: m.nixonmcinnes.co.uk! Read more…
Patrick Mays wrote this on 11.03.08 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Marketing, NixonMcInnes, RSS, Social media box
Good question; deserves big answer. Read more…
Ruth wrote this on 05.03.08 – 8 comments
It's filed in the Internet, Marketing, NixonMcInnes, Off topic, Social media, Social networks box
The analytics tool we use most often in NixonMcInnes websites is Google Analytics. Analytics tools help you gain detailed insight into how your customers are interacting with your website.
Google launched a new version of their free Google Analytics package a few weeks ago.
Benefits of the new implementation include:
Telmo wrote this on 29.02.08 – 4 comments
It's filed in the Business, Development, Internet, Marketing, NixonMcInnes, Our sites, Strategy, User experience, Web analytics, Web technology, ebooks box
A few random notes from the conference I attended yesterday…
It’s been good to hear just about all of the speakers today saying that the customer is now in control, not the marketers. Hooray, the penny has dropped!
Over the last few months, Intel has moved 70% of its marketing spend online, however most of the speakers (including Nike, Coca-Cola and Dulux) still think that the traditional above-the-line channels have quite a bit of mileage left in them yet and are planning their campaigns to be cross-media. But I guess they would be, given the subject of the conference. Nobody seems to be doubting the trend of marketing moving online however.
Some interesting perspectives on multidisciplinary teams: Nike have restructured all of their marketing away from product lines (apparel, shoes, equipment) to individual sports (football, running, etc) and within each of these areas, they work across all media. Conversely, Coca-Cola have separate teams for each type of media. Dulux also try to be quite tightly integrated - they came up with a single cross-media theme (”We know the colours that go”) then planned their campaigns across the different media around that.
Nike have an interesting approach of getting their creative agencies working together, in a what sounded like slightly forced arranged marriages, bringing talent in digital and traditional media together for particular campaigns, which they reckon leads to the best creative results. Looking at some of the stuff they’re been pumping out (Nike+ etc) you can see how this approach could work. I think I’d quite like to be paired up with a more traditional marketing agency and see what sort of cross-media ideas we could come up with.
Nike also try not to get too bogged down in business cases for the campaigns because a lot of the work builds the brand, which is hard to measure. They have a mantra: “If you build the brand, the business will come.”Another theme is around being useful to your audience - something you’ll hear social media bods like us rattle on about endlessly. However they weren’t referring to being useful within the online networks where their target audience hangs out, but around their brand promise. For example, Nike have moved away from “We sell running shoes” to “We can help you to succeed at running”, and Dulux moved away from “We sell paint” to “We can help you to get the right look”.
The chap from Dulux concluded with these tips for successful campaigns:
One final point about customer reviews from UBISOFT. When they released the game Assassin’s Creed, the user ratings online scored higher than the reviews in the magazines. The lesson? Don’t be scared of allowing customers to review and rate your products online. Providing you’re not selling shoddy goods, people are kinder than you might imagine.
Tom wrote this on 27.02.08 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Events & conferences, Marketing, Social media box
Read the latest chapter in our ebook series and find out how you can make sense of the endless stream of data generated by your web analytics package. Define the numbers that matter and use them to generate actionable insights for you and your colleagues.
Download the PDF from our ebooks section, and sign up for notification of future chapters while you’re there.
‘Essential Web Analytics’ is part of our FREE e-book - “A Marketers Guide to Social Media”.
This is a user-friendly, no-jargon guide with great examples and useful tips of how to use the latest digital techniques to make your online campaigns successful. Essential reading for marketers.
Jenni wrote this on – what do you think?
It's filed in the Free things, Marketing, NixonMcInnes, Web analytics, ebooks box
I was at an IAB event last week and watched an interesting presentation by Iain Tait from the talented gang at Poke. He talked about a book I hadn’t seen before called Made to Stick, which borrows from the study of urban myths to understand how as marketers we can create ideas that will stick. The take-home point was a rather satisfyingly cheesy acronym that sums up what makes an idea viral - S.U.C.C.E.S:
Simple
Unexpected (like the urban myth about waking up in a bath of ice without your kidneys)
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories
Thanks for the tip, Iain.
Tom wrote this on 13.02.08 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Interesting, Marketing box
‘War…[boom boom, bam bam, donk], what is it good for?’
Yeah brother. Well what about social media? [boom boom, dank dank, dom] Haaaaaa-bsolutely nuthin’...
(Or is it?)
This is a question I’ve been asking myself lately. You see, I’m a bit crazy, a bit driven and I need to achieve. But I’ve been a bit like a rocket-jet without a steering wheel. I’ve achieved bits and pieces but at the highest and most important level, I’ve lacked PURPOSE.
Which has led me to question how I use my skills and especially those of the wonderful team we’ve assembled at Nixon McInnes. When such great people come together and gel, is it reasonable to allow them to work bloody hard in an interesting, fast-moving and fun area without occasionally stepping back and asking ‘are we really giving the world our very best here?’.
Isn’t that a responsibility I have to myself and my team, to check the reason why we’re doing what we do?
Another way to frame the same question is to look at our team, our skills, our knowledge and our passions and ask: what is social media *for*?
One thing social media can be harnessed for is improving how organisations conduct their marketing. This is our line of work, and we are building a good name and reputation for ourselves here. These days we tend to work with larger organisations and so our efforts can genuinely help our client’s consumers. So in a very very small way, we’re making a positive difference one project at a time.
But that’s not enough for me, and I don’t think it’s enough for our team.
I know you, dear reader, know this and don’t wish for me to patronise or come over all sandalwood and tie-dye (duuuuude), but this world that we live in has far greater problems than how to sell handbags. And so whilst as anyone who has worked with me knows I do have genuine passion for improving how big brands communicate with their consumers, I reckon I can recruit a whole new level of passion and energy for using social media to work on the world’s biggest and most real issues.
Here’s a few of the biggies off the top o’ me head in no particular order:
You get the idea.
If it’s big, important, worthy and you (or I, more accurately) immediately pretend it isn’t there and wish it’d go away and stop interrupting your (my) thoughts about whether to buy the prawn or the roast beef sandwich, it’s probably on the list.
So this is pretty much where we’re up to, at the very start of this thinking and talking process as a team.
We’re absolutely not about to stop doing what we do, that’d a damn good plan B to tease us away from a Plan A that is currently fun and rewarding. But what we do is ever-evolving and adaptive and that is why we have survived and thrived over the years - and so we are about to start thinking about other things we can do in addition to our work harnessing social media for marketing. It’s another iteration of Project Nixon McInnes.
And please allow me to be very clear: this ain’t about Corporate Social Tickboxing either. This is about real differences made by harnessing our team’s unique blend of skills and experiences. And it’s not about not-for-profit necessarily. I guess the vision is of a blend of things: online communities, websites, applications & tools, channels, campaigns, resources, events (real world, even!) - whatever we feel can make a difference.
So here’s some questions for you, and I’d love to hear what you think.
I look forward to the conversation now :)
Will McInnes wrote this on 08.02.08 – 12 comments
It's filed in the Business, Internet, Marketing, NixonMcInnes, Off topic, Social media, Strategy box
We’ve been making marketing waves here at NM towers and hopefully educating the masses about Social Media Goodness. Feel free to check out where we’ve been and what we’ve been talking about so far in 2008 - and where you can catch up with us next…
Ruth wrote this on 06.02.08 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Business, Events & conferences, Marketing, NixonMcInnes, Press, Social media box
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