360PR Blog

You may remember 360 Social’s round-up of 2009 social media moments from last year. Well, in 2010, we turned the proverbial mic over to Lindsay Durr and Skye McIntyre. In this video, Lindsay and Skye recap some of the top moments from this year including everything from the Old Spice campaign and the surge in group deal sites, to the trend of “underage and online” and TIME’s “Person of the Year,” Mark Zuckerberg. Check it out!

Did we miss anything? Share in the comments…

Filed under: 360 Public Relations, FaceBook, Internet, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, YouTube by EliciaBasoli - 2 Comments →

We’ve told you about our 360 “Tweet and Eat” lunches before. But, this month we put a different spin on it – instead of the middle of the day, we gathered in the conference room at the end of the day, so we could all enjoy a cocktail or two while sharing some interesting case studies around the use of social media. Here are just a few highlights:

Ford Explorer Facebook Reveal – Earlier this year, Ford took a risk by revealing the new Explorer with an online and Facebook-central campaign, something that other auto-makers have never done. They revealed the new Explorer for the first time on Facebook, instead of at a big auto show. In the first day it surpassed its goal of 30K fans and, as a result, gave a free Explorer to one random fan. In addition all of the components of the campaign on Facebook, Ford heavily invested in ad buys as well to drive people to Facebook and to encourage engagement. This is a great example of a fully integrated online campaign. Check out the full case study on Mashable.

Google Zeitgeist Video - Google has compiled a video, with the help of Whirled Creative, showing how the world searched online in 2010. Over 1.5 million views on YouTube thus far! The most brilliant part of this video is that it subtly shows off some new Google features that launched this year, such as Google Instant. We highly suggest checking out the video – well done, Google!

“Rent is Too Damn UP” Spoof Video – By coincidence, another examples highlighted by staff also came from Whirled Creative. If you haven’t heard of Jimmy McMillan he ran for office in NY earlier this fall and named his political party the “Rent is too damn high” party. Really, that was the name of his party. The eccentric McMillan appeared during a televised debate and the video garnered millions of views on YouTube. Whirled Creative created a spoof mash-up, overlaying the voices from the debate onto a scene from the Pixar movie “UP” which has received over 300,000 views. Perfect example of a “viral” video leveraging current events to garner views.

Happy Holidays!

Filed under: 360 Public Relations, Digital PR, FaceBook, Internet, Social Media, Social Networking, YouTube by EliciaBasoli - 1 Comment →

Being a Bostonian means two things for certain:  1) You know that the weather outside is not going to get better for the next three months, and 2) You have driven, ridden in, or at least seen a Zipcar in the past couple of years.  The Cambridge-based car-sharing service has filled its hometown with cars of all makes and models, parked in garages, on street corners and in supermarket parking lots, while at the same time expanding into major markets all across the country (and abroad). 

On Tuesday morning, I had the pleasure of listening to a talk given by Rob Weisberg, Chief Marketing Officer of Zipcar at the Ad Club’s monthly CMO Breakfast.  The hour-long presentation focused on the ways that the brand is using social media to engage its customers, and here are a couple of quick things I found interesting about their social media strategy:

Twitter

-     Zipcar operates specific Twitter accounts in each major market where they have a presence, ensuring that all of the information they share via Twitter is relevant to the people following them.  This localized effort certainly requires some extra bandwidth, but is extremely important when operating as an on-the-ground, in-market brand.

Facebook

-     Offering services on 250 college campuses across the country, Zipcar also maintains a Facebook page for each of these

Filed under: Consumer Marketing, Events and Conferences, Interactive Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized by JohnLeRoy - No Comments →

Last January 2010, we blogged about the Facebook Rules for running contests. As we now know, most of the changes were designed to make a clear separation between the promotion and Facebook itself, and to prevent the promotion from compromising the Facebook experience. They later also added requirements for a minimum ad budget which locked out a lot of smaller businesses from running Facebook contests.

Now Facebook has issued very exciting new promotional guidelines that truly make life simpler and more democratic when it comes to running contests. 360 Social took a close look at the recent changes – here are the key takeaways:

1.Companies can now host promotions ON Facebook (i.e. you don’t have to host the contest OFF Facebook.com anymore) and an ad buy is no longer required to host a promotion. This is great news for smaller companies that may not have big ad budgets.

2. Facebook does not need to approve the promotion before it goes live (but you still have to stick to their promotional guidelines and platform rules.

3. You can only host the contest on a separate application tab, however, and cannot administer the contest on the Wall (this rule isn’t new, but worth re-emphasizing.) Seems like a smart idea as it keeps the News Feed clean.

4. You CAN require that an entrant like a page, before they enter a contest (you just can’t ask them to take other actions for entry – i.e. post a status update, comment on a wall, etc.).

Check out the full guidelines here on the Facebook site.

Question for you: what do you think motivated Facebook to change their rules to allow brands to run promotions on their Facebook page? Do you think it was a victory for customer service or is it prompted by the competitive environment – Twitter getting more savvy about running promotions?

Filed under: Uncategorized by Admin - No Comments →