1. DEXTER VIRAL – TEN
Oh no, not another loony running around with a blade! But hang on a minute,
like all good detectives re-visiting the crime scene, on closer inspection
this is a viral piece for the new series of Dexter. The intro to the US
news report is believable – with the taped-off police areas and CCTV
footage of the killer leaving the scene adds to the authenticity. I do like the
idea and like all good virals has that viral effect in that you can personalise
the piece and send it on giving the impression that your mate could be
next – lovely idea. After all that was revealed at the end, I thought the art
direction needed more of an edge and the line “You’ve just been given the
Dexter treatment” was not as sharp as Dexter’s blade. A good effort overall. 

2. THE HAPPENING
Quick cuts, camera zooms with deep gravelly voice-overs from the director
of the Sixth Sense – it was bound to grab my attention, so when I went
online to find out what was happening I was still none the wiser. Maybe that
was the whole point? To create enough intrigue that you’ll want to see the film.
There was ‘The Happening experiment’ which was basically a flash mob of people
all falling to the ground at the same time. I love the thought, but have seen
this idea done before in New York’s Times Square where everyone ‘froze’

3. VICELAND TIME CRISIS GAME
A shoot-em-up game with lots of blood and a high body count – now we’re talking.
As a non-Vice reader, I didn’t really understand the ‘don’ts and dos’ and as
I entered the site I was taken straight to the shooting range.
It would have been nice to chose your weapon of choice as my personal
favourite is the AK-47. Still, pulling my hard gangsta bro face I started shooting.
It didn’t feel like I was using an AK- 47, it felt more like a water pistol. More
action and sound effects would have helped the experience of a virtual
shoot-em-up world all blokes love.

4. BIG BROTHER
A virtual Big Brother house that has lovely art direction. I loved the Flash
animation (apart from a glitch when I rolled over the music stereo in the bedroom)
and thought it was well executed. The prize on offer is an ‘ultimate’
trip for two to the Gold Coast, including limo transfers and a tour of the BB
house and other things. I guess this is very appealing for the
audience but for me – who doesn’t watch BB with all the naval gazing that
goes on with a bunch of wannabe stars – this site didn’t entice me enough to
interact, so earning points and cracking codes wasn’t compelling enough (not
even for a trip to the Gold Coast) and I reckon this audience haven’t the attention
span to navigate around the site.

5. THE WORLD GAME
I thought the site design and interface was a bit stale, but I did like the fact
that they had videos, blogs and stats on the ‘beautiful game’. To be honest
if you’re a football nut this site will be a favourite. For me, it was the
videos from the English Premier League, and coming from the East
End of London I was looking for the ‘ammers, what the hell? No West
Ham and as they say around Upton Park ‘bloody liberty’. I still feel they
could have ‘real’ fans from Australia talking and reviewing games. The
site could have also used Vodcasts and not just on the blogs, and polls
from the fans would have added a bit more to the site.

6. BRATZ FASHION DESIGNER
Out of all the sites I reviewed, this site for me worked the best.
I know it works well as my three girls are on this site all the time so I
know from first-hand experience that this is a great site.
It has everything that all good online experiences should have – relevant
rich content, personalisation with the ‘Fashion Studio to The
Gallery’ where you can upload your favourite design and vote for the
best. This site really understands who its talking to, it doesn’t try to be too
clever but still manages to be very rich and immersive. This gets top marks from me.

Case Study: Blackmores BeYourBest Website

To promote the Sydney Running Festival, Blackmores asked Bullseye to design a site that helped runners get the best out of their experience on race day.

We came up with various tools that helped runners achieve their best no matter what their level of fitness. There were training tips, recommended runs, split calculators, even a personalised training program that catered for everyone, from first timers to the more experienced athlete. The training program was custom built for an individuals level of fitness. A number of ‘Challenges’ were introduced during the 8 week lead up to the run, including training sessions and organising running groups to meet up. You could even go round the whole course without leaving your armchair with a web cam which was condensed into a 5 minute timeline: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOwHMbOjh_I
This video brought the experience and flavour of the event to life online way before the big day.

Over 7,000 ‘Challenges’ were taken over the 8 week training program: The site was so successful after the event that we continued the ‘Challenge’ and re-tailored the training program to incorporate not just runs but walks and bike rides. Individuals can track and view the best walks or runs at a glance within Google maps. This fitted perfectly with the brand strategy to become part of the bigger ‘B Your Best’ movement within Blackmores set of sites.

The site is specifically targeted at an individuals level of fitness and a particular stage of life. From weight to pregnancy we developed interactive tools to help you ‘B your best’ this jump page was aimed at all Australians and was deliberately designed to become a rallying call for everyone to take the ‘challenge’ and strive to be fitter.

Another way we promoted the brand value of ‘Be your best’ for Blackmores was to keeep people motivated in preparing for the event and to continue to engage with them once they completed the run. Runners who participated in the Running Festival were able to see themselves cross the finish line by entering their bib number or name. They could also forward their very own ‘moment of glory’ to family and friends.
http://www.byourbest.com/Finish/  We also suggested people share their experience by tagging their pictures with ‘BSRF08’ which was then streamed onto the official Blackmore’s site for all to share in true Web 2.0 fashion. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/BSRF08/show/

Kevin Ferry our creative Director summed the whole event up by saying: ‘It’s amazing the web, yes I know we all talk about the fancy websites, cool interfaces, and slick animation etc. but for me nothing beats it when real people from real communities come together and contribute via the web; that’s what happened last week at the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival, one of the best.”’ Visit the site

Social Media – Your 3 Step action plan

The continued growth of Social media has resulted in a massive power shift to the consumer. The ability for consumers to voice their opinions is unprecedented in the history of media and the ability to effectively interpret and engage with this channel is often ignored.

Social media cannot be controlled; ignoring it just eliminates you from the conversations. Due to the global scale and the sheer volume of online conversations taking place, knowing how to respond to social media can be a little daunting.

In this article I’ll outline a 3 step action plan that will assist you to understand and respond to social media. It will also help you to establish an accurate online brand identity and provide you with the ability to influence conversations, a real competitive advantage for any organisation

I define Social Media as “Open conversations that encourage participation and connect people”.

Listen – Engage – Influence

Step 1. Listen

Listen involves the development of a process to both understand the conversations that are present, as well as the implementation of a process to action the insights.

Listening to social media conversations requires a combination of skills.

Online research techniques should be combined with business and marketing acumen, to collate and produce information in a manner that can easily be digested, allowing ongoing insights to be deduced and actioned.

Identifying influential conversations where your organisations should potentially have a voice, is one of the most challenging outcomes of this step. Consideration needs to be made of the author’s reputation, as well as the website reach and volume of conversation.

Valuable insights are also discovered through the provision of opinions in real time, listening will also identify potential gaps or bias in points of view which your business can address.

Early warning of potential risks is another benefit which stems from a social media listening process.

A social media audit is a good first step which involves a broad brush search of the categories where your organisation competes. There are a number of specialist blog search engines such as http://www.technorati.com which can provide a quick list of recent blog mentions for a given search string.

Setting up Google alerts http://www.google.com/alerts for various keywords of importance is another step that will help gauge the quantity and types of conversations related to one or more search strings.

Once you are listening to conversations, it gives you permission to engage with them.

Step 2. Engage

The creation of a social media participation framework is an important and ongoing process that acts to steer the location, resources and communication style for social media engagement.

Effective social media engagement provides a valuable feedback channel, offering the ability to improve customer service, exhibit leadership and create an innovation stream. Another benefit to social media engagement, which often emerges for organisations and brands, is a deeper self awareness of your positioning.

Leveraging this opportunity requires careful planning and consideration of appropriate outcomes and risks. However, it is important for companies to instil some basic “Rules of Engagement” so that employees know how to engage with social media.

The development of a social media policy should include the following principles:-

· Engagement etiquette
Social media is more immediate, more interment and therefore a more casual style is called for. No matter what tone or engagement area, basic communication etiquette should be followed.

· Transparency
The most common error organisations and their agencies make is the lack of transparency in their engagement. Companies misrepresenting the truth are regularly found out, with the results being broadcast for all to see. This can cause challenging issues, as happened when the NAB’s PR agency engaged with social media to advertise a promotion without declaring their relationship to NAB.

· Horses for Courses
Identifying where to engage is a critical step in the engagement process and the broad nature of social media requires that different resources from different departments are required to manage this engagement. For example, engaging in a technical forum is best achieved using technical resources.

· Incentivise contribution
Employees are often your best source of information, but many companies fail to incentivise them for their engagement contributions.

· Responsiveness
The ability to provide timely engagement is critical to the effectiveness of organisations ability to join the conversations. A good rule of thumb is that engagement should occur within 48 hours.

· Integration
Wherever possible, online participation should be aligned with offline communication as it amplifies the message and demonstrates consistency.

· Communication of the policy
Many corporations have created a policy and yet their employees have not been informed or are not aware of it. Social media engagement policies should be integrated with induction processes and also updated regularly.

Participation, participation, participation is the new Location, location, location.

Making it easy for people to discover and spread your goodwill is the primary principle behind social media marketing.

Most companies have marketing budgets which are used to communicate messages to their consumers, but using those budgets effectively for influencing conversations is often an afterthought.

Influencing consumer behaviour has always been an objective of marketing agencies, but with the growth of social media, a number of principles should be employed.

· Measurement
Investment in social media influence programs provides a unique opportunity to measure the effectiveness of all forms of marketing. As social media grows, so does the ability to establish social media metrics for marketing spend. So listen to social media to measure the effectiveness of your marketing spend.

· Building loyalty
Identifying influencers and lead consumers provides a foundation for the creation of ongoing loyalty programs. It also identifies collaboration opportunities that may be useful for expanding the awareness of your product or service through word of mouse!

Influence is all about measuring the impact on social media of your campaigns and using that insight to create and stimulate conversations.

Social media is an exciting new medium, and the 3 step action plan should help you to understand the insights, navigate your engagement, and leverage your marketing spend.

Ian Farmer – Senior Brand Strategist
E Ian.farmer@bullseye.com.au
M 0417 460 518