Being Blonde

Opinion is divided on this one.

My eldest daughter is of an age where she thinks it’s not cool to be keen.

I keep telling her “It is, it is.”

Isn’t it?

I’ve spent some time dabbling in various social media on behalf of IRN-BRU, with particular regard to their sponsorship of the Scottish Football League.

It’s interesting to see what happens when a representative of the brand declares his presence in a forum discussion thread. Clearly this is about picking your moment, being open about your official connection to the brand, believing that your contribution will be relevant, and apologising up front in case it isn’t.

When you get these things right, for a brand like IRN-BRU at least, the effect is akin to placing a magnet amongst iron filings. The conversation rearranges itself based on the brand’s presence.

The problem is that I only have time (and fee!) to dabble. However, I’ve dabbled on behalf of a few brands and this has taught me quite a lot. It has also allowed me to develop a view on how I’d organise my business for social media if I were a brand owner.

Social media happens in real time. To make it work you can’t afford the luxury, the safety net, of the standard approval processes that are attached to other forms of marketing communication. By the time you’ve got approval to say something from the CEO, crossed swords with the legal department and salvaged a statement that still just about manages to say something, the moment has gone.

So I’d have someone representing my brand full-time.

They’d have to understand my brand, they’d have to understand the business, they’d have to have an innate understanding of social media and the etiquette required of brands in these spaces, and they’d have to have easy access to the right people in order to short-circuit the approval process on occasions when a second opinion were needed.

The perhaps not-so-obvious answer is a graduate trainee.

A fast-track graduate trainee.

I remember when I worked on the Shell UK account many years ago they had a fast-tracking system for graduates who had been earmarked as future stars. Their training programme was different, their mentoring was more intense, and their access to senior management was much greater.

That fast-track model could work well in a social media context. Any twenty something graduate worth their salt will be hard-wired with all the social media skills required of the job.

In return they’d get a fast-track induction to all aspects of the business, and they’d have privileged access to senior managers. They’d probably sit close to the CEO.

By representing the brand in social media for even a relatively sort period they’d learn an awful lot about the brand, they’d have personal contact with the brand’s consumers and they’d have a daily opportunity to demonstrate their communication, decision-making and diplomacy skills to those best placed to influence their career.

It would be a gilt-edged apprenticeship opportunity. Eat your heart out Alan Sugar.

We won the Best E-mail Creative award at the DADI’s last week for work done in promoting our Grolsch Coincidence campaign.

The Coincidence campaign was also commended in the FMCG category.

The motley crew shown above went down to Leeds and apparently monopolised the dance floor for much of the evening. As usual, Nick’s doing his “look at me, look at me” routine. Only Fraser is listening, however.

Q. What do a Grolsch glass, various sex toys and incontinence pads have in common?

A. They’re all items that have been sent to an unfortunate lady in Oldham as part of a distressing campaign of harrassment against her.

Apparently someone has been signing this poor person up for all sorts of offers and samples, the result being that she is being bombarded with unrequested stuff.

As a result of the inclusion of the Grolsch glass in this campaign, a promotion that was fulfilled from the Grolsch site, one of our producers found herself helping police with their inquiries. We’ve provided them with as much information as we can about the source of  the sign-up and hopefully it will be of use in identifying the culprit(s).

I posted recently about an unfortunate incident involving a whiteboard in Eat’s  Tottenham Court Road outlet.

Subsequently (yesterday in fact at the time of writing), Niall Macarthur, one of Eat’s founders, got back to me and we had a faith restoring exchange of e-mails, at the end of which I politely declined his kind offer of a free breakfast on arrival in London this morning.

Having arrived in the same establishment today, I am delighted to report that the offending whiteboard has moved or gone. The only evidence of it ever having been there are the tops of the rawlplugs that once held it in position.

Impressive. Not just a nice e-mail from the top guy, but immediate action based on my feedback.

The porridge with apple, sultanas and cinnamon was pretty impressive too.

It’s been a while since we posted in this category.

This one has been hanging around since the Summer Party. Finance Director Keith was in the Geeks group.

John Prescott was on the concourse at Waverley station this morning. He was pacing up and down whilst talking on his mobile.

Said pacing covered a sufficient distance to cause one of the station staff to give him a warning about leaving his bags unattended.

This generated much mirth amongst everyone who, up until that point, had been pretending not to recognise him.

The Daily Mash is the UK’s largest humour site based on its (impressive) traffic figures. It offers a satirical, no-holds-barred take on current affairs and has, in a short space of time, grown a strong following and generated a high volume of heart-felt praise in the blogosphere.

I had a chat yesterday with Paul Stokes, who co-founded and co-writes for the site. I first met Paul when he was a senior journalist at the ill-fated Business a.m.

It was an entertaining and informative discussion about what makes the site tick, how they’ve consistently grown their audience via word of mouth and how they’ve managed to develop a paying lifestyle business.

They’re now at a size where they need to make some important decisions about how to take the brand to the next level - how to structure the business and how to further “monetise” the content without compromising on what has made the site feel special to its current audience.

It’s interesting to hear the internet viewed as a double-edged sword. On the one hand it significantly reduces the start-up cost of any publishing business. On the other it brings commercial challenges in an environment where free content is the rule of thumb.

If you like your satire served hot it’s well worth a look.