Sometimes, attractive audience numbers overshadow what social media is all about – socialising.

In this interview, Lachlan Brahe, Managing Director of emitch, Sydney, talks about the importance of understanding the social setting before engaging in it.

To find out more about how your brand can embrace social media email lachlan.brahe@emitch.com.au

Thanks to: Lachlan Brahe

You can always rely on Diesel to deliver unconventional statements and this goes for its marketing as well as its fashion.

To launch its flagship Fifth Avenue store, themed live dinner parties were held in its storefront window for 5 nights. Guest participants included famous New York DJs, sportsmen, models and other personalities.

The store itself exudes creativity and invites consumers to live the brand experience, with DJ booths on multi-levels, store-wide Wi-Fi, e-commerce portals and wireless cash stations.

Recognising that staying in is the new going out, Diesel is clearly mirroring a current social trend, in a highly creative way. But it also proves it’s the kind of brand that has more to offer behind its closed doors.

Thanks to: Diesel, coolhunter.com

T-Mobile is fast becoming the brand known for bringing the sunshine into people’s everyday lives, in the most unexpected ways. The concepts are simple, but execution is huge, fun and inclusive.

Following its infamous dance event in Liverpool Street station in January, the company upped the ante with a grand-scale karaoke event, attracting 13,500 people to London’s Trafalgar Square.

But the exposure didn’t stop there.

The brand experience extended to creating hubs on YouTube and Facebook, offering the possibility of receiving an exclusive invite to its next event. By embracing the viral element, it’s now creating a growing community of followers.

A brilliant example of a brand that is living up to its promise of ‘Life is for Sharing’.

Thanks to: T-Mobile

According to the QUT Centre on Philanthropy and nonprofit Studies, for every 437 people in Australia is 1 charity. As the advertising for this sector becomes more cut-throat, the big players are finding new ways to stand out.

The Australian Childhood Foundation took its hard-hitting Stop Child Abuse Now campaign to the streets, promoting the message that neglected children are made to feel invisible.

In Finland, UNICEF launched this controversial campaign. Shock tactics saw a pram abandoned in the streets, with the sound of a baby crying from the inside. When passerbys got up close they were greeted with the message: “Thank you for caring. We hope there are more people like you. UNICEF. Be a Mom for a moment.”

It’s a hard-hitting campaign that certainly questions the appropriateness of embarking on such a sensitive topic. But as a brand in the short term, UNICEF received an increase in web traffic of 1000% throughout the campaign and a rise in donations of 10%.

There is no doubt these innovative examples are gaining attention and could beckon other sectors to follow.

Thanks to: ABC Radio National, Inventing the third sector, May 16th with Stephen Crittenden, UNICEF, bootstrappingblog.com, Australian Childhood Foundation, campaignbrief.com, QUT Centre on Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies

The Australian Defence Force is one brand that understands its target audience. After launching its hugely successful Defence Jobs Games in 2007, here we look at the latest innovation inflating the hype.

Developed by interactive agency, Visual Jazz, Supreme Air Combat is one of the most popular games within a series of sophisticated online strategy and action games, where players can build avatars and take part in simulated air, land and sea military operations.

With an existing membership of over 40,000 people, Visual Jazz extended its popularity, embracing the rise in iPhone and its App Store by developing a Supreme Air Combat application.

And it appears to have worked. Within the first week over 10,000 people had downloaded the game, today over 100,000 people have downloaded it. In fact, in the weeks following its release, Supreme Air Combat reached the top 5 free apps available.

Users even created their own, ‘How to Play’ and ‘Review’ videos and posted them on YouTube.

It recognised that new technology not only engages and entertains, but can also be used to demonstrate the strategic requirements of the job.

If you would like to find out more contact Konrad Spilva at Visual Jazz.

Thanks To: Australian Defence Force, Visual Jazz

We all know today’s conversations take place online. Here, we look at how 2 very different brands are using contrasting approaches to build momentum.

Confectionary brand, Skittles, may score points for its brave integration with social media, but its latest campaign also highlights how being brave isn’t always easy.

To market its new range, ‘Crazy Cores’, skittles.com uses a light-hearted, fun approach to embrace independent conversations about its brand.

Visitors to skittles.com can see other people’s feelings towards the brand and even contribute should they feel like it. As you work through the official site’s pages, you are led to a number of different social media platforms - Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia or Facebook.

Brave? Yes, very. But at the end of the day Skittles has now taken back some control after the campaign stimulated some out-of-hand content, namely crude and pornographic material. To combat this, Skittles now redirects traffic only to sites it trusts is being managed to some extent, like Facebook.
Skittles is achieving a couple of things here. It’s demonstrating to people it understands they want to interact in a social environment that’s more objective than its official brand site. It’s also bravely encouraging all opinions, while choosing to sit alongside them.

Embracing people’s opinion is also on the agenda for the NRMA.

When the 2008 Mini Budget results mentioned no initiatives to improve Australia’s roads, the NRMA decided to provide a platform for people to voice their opinions, with the aim to drive change.

Roadtube.com.au enables people to share what irritates them about the roads.

Look at this example above from Stephen Wright, who attached a camera to the dashboard of his truck and filmed some of the local roads in his village of Dungog in the Hunter Valley. The NRMA is now supporting Stephen by working with the local council, who is in turn lobbying the Federal Government for change.

“NRMA is the white knight here, giving a voice to the voiceless and uniting lone whingers into a vast grumbling army”. Helen Barnes, Research Analyst, Mitchell Communication Group.

An army indeed, let’s hope change is in the making!

Thanks to: Skittles, NRMA – roadtube.com.au, Stephen Wright