I have just found out I have won a place to stand on the forth plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley’s ‘living monument’ project One & Other. I will be on the plinth from 7-8pm on Sunday 2nd August.
For more detail of what this project is about this is an exerpt from the One & Other website:
This summer, sculptor Antony Gormley invites you to help create an astonishing living monument. He is asking the people of the UK to occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. They will become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity.
Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own. If you’re selected, you can use your time on the plinth as you like. One & Other is open to anyone and everyone from any corner of the UK. As long as you’re 16 or over and are living or staying in the UK, you can apply to be part of this unforgettable artistic experiment.
And to see what Antony Gormley has to say about it check out his video here.
I feel very honoured and excited to be involved and want to make the most of the opportunity. Antony talks about the democrotisation of society and representing people in the UK today, and I would love whatever I do up there to reflect this.
So, I have had a couple of ideas about what I can do with the help of a few of my colleagues, and I would really like to do something which involves crowdsourcing and letting others input to what I do.
One idea is to ask people to twitter to me (create a hashtag for this project within the project) with tweets they would like me to hold up written on card while I’m on the plinth.
Another (which is my favourite so far, from the genius ideas machine that is Jenni Lloyd) is to get people to tweet me stuff they would like me to draw while I’m on the plinth. I could take a flip chart, some pens, and have a lot of fun in that hour. I could even mix it up with requests from the crowd (the real life one, in Trafalgar Square) and take in live tweet requests. I could fold up each finished giant drawing and send it out into the crowd in giant paper planes (so long as people don’t throw them back to me and knock me off!)
What do you think? Any other ideas? Really open to ideas and would like my time up there to be a collaborative peice made by all of us.
Brand guidelines should do just that – guide. They should encourage those working with them to think seriously but creatively about the brand. All too often they are implemented rigidly and uniformly, like Health and Safety Guideline. They are not questioned and so do not change. A static brand as laid down in unchanging guidelines is one that fails to keep the pace of change with its dynamic consumers.
MTV gets it right. Their creative executions are always definitely MTV and that each iteration is unique and compelling—they are connected to their fast-changing consumers. Also getting it right is Amnesty. They have really done a lot of work to sharpen up their brand voice. Love or hate Nike, they do produce outstanding campaigns that never look the same but yet are instantly recognisable by their sense of fun.
Set your brand free by engaging honestly and creatively with the guidelines—don’t be afraid to make changes. Be guided not constrained.
If you’re going to the Online Marketing Show on Tuesday next week (30 June.) at Olympia, come along to the Olympia Room at 9:45 where I’ll be on a panel discussing how you can get a social media strategy kicked off. My angle will be based on our experience with large brands.
If you can’t make it but would like to find out more then please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.
After all, when you can set up a WordPress blog for free, in minutes, why would you invest thousands of pounds, plus your team’s time and energy, in getting us to build it for you?
For starters, a blog isn’t just a blog, it ’s a platform for conversations with your audience, often the first that any company considers embarking on. It’s also a content distribution platform, allowing you to disseminate your voice out into the social web, reaching your audience wherever they already are.
WordPress, and ExpressionEngine – the platforms we know inside out, aren’t simply blogging platforms either – given the right know-how, they’re an engine that can drive fully-fledged socially-enabled sites, without the need for a ground-up development process that takes six months or more.
What’s even more important to recognise is that if your company decides to take that first step into the social space with a blog, everyone has to be comfortable with opening themselves up to their audience.
For a start, it’s got to reflect your brand. We spend a lot of time understanding the personality and visual identity of a brand. We carefully meld it to take into account it will become a shared space, for conversations between you and your audience. It’s not the same as an old-school push marketing website, it’s got to have an identity of its own, and be a place where people feel comfortable talking.
But there’s also the question of being comfortable with just the idea of opening yourself up to comment.
Understandably, there’s still a degree of reticence within some companies in starting those conversations. We run workshops with all our clients to understand how their processes work, bringing in legal, marketing, PR and anyone who has a stake in how the brand is perceived online.
It’s an exercise in understanding everyone’s needs and objectives, as well as the things that make them start chewing their fingernails and turning grey.
Only once we understand these things can we deliver something that everyone embraces, and stands a good chance of success without internal pressures constraining the conversation.
And success is a key consideration when we’re scoping a blog – it would be all too easy (and heartbreaking for us) to put together a beautiful new blog and hand it over, only to see it stagnate.
It’s important to remember a blog is a container for its content – and unless that content is compelling, relevant and useful to your audience, it’s not going to gain the traction it needs to be successful.
Before we’ve even launched a blog, we spend time working closely with our clients to create content plans. We help you carefully consider why you’re launching a blog, everything you might have to talk about over the next 12 months and what your audience is going to find engaging.
This is a vital part of launching any website, but too often overlooked when it comes to blogs – it’s easy to concentrate on the build without looking further into why people will want to actually take part.
We also help create moderation guidelines that don’t stifle conversations but make sure that some of the more sensitive internal stakeholders, like legal and PR, feel like this blog will be a great opportunity, not a liability.
Looking back over this post, which I’ve made as short as I can without missing too much out, I think the length probably shows how much more than ‘just a blog’ a NixonMcInnes blog really is.
If you’re thinking of launching a blog or community website for your company, why not get in touch?
*Thanks to Flickr user donjd2 for use of the image.
This is one of the most exciting WordPress news our team of developers has had this year!
VideoPress is a well thought through offering from Automattic (the company supporting the awesome blogging platform that is WordPress) that allows bloggers on WordPress.com to quickly and easily upload and share HD video content online. Read more…
I was gutted to miss the special screening in London of the film Us Now yesterday, but fortunately you can stream it online.
It’s a film about democracy, and how the web allows us to form
groups, connect, work together, and participate. These social
interactions are so natural to us as humans, yet they have never
possible before on such a large scale. The film will open your eyes to
the implications of social technologies on some of the oldest
institutions that we have - like government, banks, and even football
clubs. We’re at such an early stage of understanding where these
changes will take us, but at a time when the old institutions have let
us all down so badly, it’s exciting to start to imagine a better world.
Well done to Dominic Campbell and the rest of the guys at FutureGov for keeping these issues on the agenda, and putting on what was an by all accounts an excellent event.
We initially launched a single issue blog last year, dedicated to showcasing CFS’ commitment to Microfinance. It told the story of Belma, a bank employee returning to her native Bosnia to see the impact CFS funding is having within local communities. As a pilot project this site gave CFS an insight into the advantage of using a fast, flexible platform to share stories in an informal way. Customer response via comments was fairly positive, and as the banking crisis hit, highlighted the benefits of providing an open channel for dialogue with the bank - a real point of difference within the industry.
This first foray into blogging created an internal appetite to showcase more campaigns, like those against Toxic Fuels or financing renewable energy , and also publish regular news content to create and sustain a dialogue with the various communities of interest. Populating a site of this nature and nurturing the community is a considerable and important task and CFS has made the commitment to the blog’s success by putting dedicated resource into place. We’re looking forward to seeing how this community grows and develops and continuing to help CFS demonstrate how they truly are ‘good with money‘.
Hitwise data released yesterday shows that Twitter has continued its inexorable rise in popularity, with UK internet visits to the micro-blogging site up by six times since the beginning of the year - leading to its entry into the top 50 UK websites for the first time.
Whilst the name Twitter and all its related Tweet-isms might be breeding ennui in some jaded marketers, it’s also the case that according to Hitwise this site is receiving
‘more UK internet visits than the Daily Mail, RightMove, MSN UK Search, Directgov, and all retail websites - with the exception of eBay, Amazon UK, Play.com and Argos’
- all of which probably pay large parts in many traditional online media plans.
Not only is that a whole lot of eyeballs but Twitter is also proving to be a valuable referrer of traffic. Hitwise reports:
‘As well as being the 50th most visited website in the UK, it was also the 36th biggest source of traffic to other websites in the UK during March’.
All this activity has lead to a rapid growth in the amount of attention paid to Twitter in companies’ marketing strategies, according to Econsultancy’s UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report, released last week. Compared to last year’s 3%, this year 49% of marketers cited in the report are including Twitter in their social media marketing mix.
Ideally this new focus on Twitter would be part of a holistic social media marketing strategy with the tool being chosen to fit the target audience and set objectives - not just a bit of ‘me too’ activity. Sadly the same report carries evidence that this might not be the case - 19% of respondents aren’t tracking their activity at all and 49% have admitted that they have no idea how successful or otherwise their campaigns have been.
So, we can see that there are sound reasons for brands to engage with Twitter - but it’s essential to first identify a clear purpose for the activity, alongside a set of objectives against which you can then measure your success and justify your investment.
Today is the 10th anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto – a set of 95 theses about how business is changing forever - that became a book of the same name. Although the term ‘social media’ wasn’t used until years later, many people hail Cluetrain as the start of this new world, and it’s been a huge influence on us here at NixonMcInnes since we started in 2000.
To mark the 10th anniversary of Cluetrain, a wiki has been set up where people have been volunteering to pick up one of the theses and write a blog post about it.
I grabbed theses No. 20, mostly because I thought it would be fun to write about:
“Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.”
You see, in the age of Cluetrain, a brand isn’t something that you position and control. Your brand is whatever the people out there say you are. And as Chevy found out, they’re often laughing at you.
And you don’t just get laughed at when you invite the crowd to write advertising slogans for you. Next time you have a corporate slip on a banana skin, you’re gonna get laughed at. Very publicly.
Having rats infest your fast food restaurant is unlucky. Having a TV crew show up is unwanted attention. But having a million people forward the clip to their friends because they think it’s funny. Well, that’s Cluetrain.
Oooh, people are cruel aren’t they? Yep, but it’s hardly surprising after centuries of corporations telling us what to think them.
Even messages to your own employees will make their way into the public domain, and you can get laughed at for that too, as Mike Soutar found out.
“It makes such a difference”
So where does all this leave us? Well, it leads us quite neatly onto thesis No. 21 - “Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.”
No company has done this better than Blendtec. Taking their slightly awkward, nerdy CEO and putting him in front of a camera blending stuff that was never meant to be blended. From an initial outlay of $50, Blendtec have increased sales by 700% just by allowing people to laugh with them, and not just at them.
If you’re at Internet World tomorrow (Weds 29 April) why not stop by the snappily titled ‘Web 2.0, Social Networking, Usability, Design & Build Theatre‘ at midday for a panel debate on the subject of buzz monitoring. I’m chairing the session, and I’m joined by panel members representing buzz monitoring technology vendors; agencies and brands, so it’ll be a good mix.
If you’re wondering how to approach buzz monitoring at your organisation, then come along and ask a question.
Can’t make it? We have a free e-book on buzz monitoring that you can download from our ebooks page (no registration required, unless you’d like us to notify you of future e-books.)
