At team Invention we’re quite into the 20 slide and 6 minute presentation style called “Pecha Kucha“. Each week a member of our team gives a Pecha Kucha about something they’re passionate about in order to: ice the cake that is our monday meeting ;p

Last week my Pecha Kucha was about photography and a couple of weeks ago Luke did a great one about the sea—the Rick Stein gags haven’t stopped since.

Messing around aside, Alastair decided to pull together a Pecha Kucha-esq deck about our collective thoughts on what we call “Social Centric Planning”. It’s not meant to be a prescriptive deck and it’s still work in progress. Happy to hear your suggestions?

I’ve been busy recently, what have I been up to?

Errmm…doing site audits, working on pitches and taking trains to Manchester.

Manchester is cool, lots of construction work under way and old boarded up buildings, which were full of character and plastered with graffiti.

On the way back to London I bought a packet of chocolate covered Sun Maid Raisins, I’d never seen these anywhere before.

If you were a child of the 80’s like moi, you’ll probably remember The California Raisins ad’s, TV show and songs.

How cool were they? All the kids at school use to watch the show and munch on the raisins, not because they tasted fantastic (without chocolate), but because raisins were cool.

That show and the ad’s were pioneering examples of brand entertainment, contentainment or whatever you want to call it. I don’t know about you guys, but thanks to those ad’s I’ve always subconsciously associated Marvin Gaye with dried fruit.

God I love this ad! Stupid, pointless and just plain funny! I hope these guys play on the characters throughout the rest of their offline/online comms. Possibilities are endless and I expect to see more of the same humour in other channels and formats.

Genius!

Apple strike again with another really well made iPod ad. Apple have become renowned for using bands such as The Fratellis and Feist in iPod ads of days gone by. This time Apple have enlisted Chairlift; who have an easy, Vampire Weekendish sound.

Apple are clearly another brand that have successfully piggybacked their marketing and advertising off good music, the use of new music from innovative bands is a good sign that Apple understand their core audience really well.

Other well known brands that are tapping into the music scene come in the form of the mobile networks.

O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone are all sponsoring events and music based marketing initiatives in order to get closer to younger audiences.

We’re in an advertising era where two way dialogue and brand conversation seem to mean everything.

Is interrupt marketing dead, inefficient or ineffective? I don’t think so.

Some recent TV advertisements have been creative and entertaining to the extent of gaining viral distribution and word of mouth recognition. Take for example the Cadburys or Britvic Drench ads, I know friends who have been emailing links of them to each other just because they are entertaining.

Above the line planners and creatives are quite clearly working harder to be more innovative and I think the focus is now shifting towards TV ads which have real viral capability and the ability to spark conversation.

Why?

Sky+ and Digital TV empower people to skip through ads and flick across TV channels.

There are more ads and TV channels than ever before, modern ads have to cut through all the choice available in cluttered market in order to command a viewers time.

Due to these factors TV advertisers now need to find alternative methods of getting people to watch their ads.

How?

If adverts are being seen by smaller audiences it is important to make the quality of the ads as good as a mini productions or something that warrants conversation or recommendation amongst audience peers.

The next time someone sees brand X’s TV ad they might just sit all the way through it as they had it recommended to them as good entertainment.

One good ad that I’ve recently liked is the M&S fairground ad. The classic David Bowie song and cinematic grandeur of the fairground really make it stay in my head, you also wouldn’t think it’s an M&S ad the first time you watch it either.

It’s not gimmicky either, no Gorillas playing drums or Thunderbird’s dancing; It’s just a good, well produced Ad.

UberSpat not only facilitates conversation and debate, it also lets users reinforce the debate with content, which can strengthen debates from various angles.

This website is a great way for “scared” brands to test the waters of two way dialogue and take learning’s from conversation and debate generated on the platform into developing their own purposed and branded conversation platforms such as blogs, forums or social networks.

I am sure UberSpat will be the first in a string of websites of its kind, ideas this good never stay unique.

Microblogging has so many versatile marketing uses, however, clients question why they should use microblogs and what are the real benefits?

I could probably sit here and write 10 or more obvious reasons, however, one of the most important reasons has to be search engine visibility…I will lend you my real world example:

I bought a lovely pair of Nike Vomero 3 running shoes two weeks ago and ever since I have been busy putting them through their paces. As I have been so happy with them I decided to do a few searches in order to see what other people had to say about them.

As soon as I queried “Nike Vomero3” a twitter tweet ranked No.2 (Google UK & No.1 Google UK (UK)) providing a good review of the shoe. So there we are, there’s the head smacker…search engine visibility!

Not only are microblogs social media platforms which syndicate information, facilitate conversation and enable community building; they are also capable of providing good search engine visibility over time. This is something that many DR centric brands will value.

One particular one stuck that out was Urban Nerds, what a cool logo I thought to my-self. Also what a great place to position your brand, trendy West-End of London where all the fashion-conscious work and pass through everyday.

It would be expensive to buy some quality outdoor advertising in a location like this, however to the right people a small sticker is enough to draw the right attention.

I got to the office and decided to Google the brand name, they’re an underground group of hip-hop DJ’s. I dug deeper and in Facebook they have 2493 fans. Good work! They also seem to be using the group to post news releases and market their gigs and activities. Their website also seems to have the right look, feel and functionality for the audience they’re trying to reach.

What I like about the whole approach to their marketing is that it is clever through both offline and online, the advertiser really knows their audience and how to target them.

Whether this marketing strategy was well thought out or combined on the off chance through luck we do not know. Brands need to be innovative across whole their whole advertising schedule if they want social media strategies to work to their fullest extent.

Brands going down the social networking route should also be working to do something innovative with their offline activity too. It’s no good trying to appear informal, cool and helpful within a social networking environment if your offline advertising screams uniform above the line communication, people see this first and then become dismissive of any social media/networking initiatives introduced to them at later stages.

People have always preached uniformity across holistic marketing campaigns when it comes to messaging and approach, the introduction of social media/networking to a businesses marketing mix should not change this.

If your goal is too seek maximum benefits from social media then other parts of your marketing mix should be geared to support this.

For example if your goal is to help people via posting information into relevant social network groups then ensure your offline media communicates a message of how your brand is geared towards helping people, with this pre-notification people in social environments will receive your contributions with more warmth and engage with initiatives more positively.