01. Pilot markets its fine-line pen by micro-tattooing a series of LEGO men	02. Zaini promotes it’s smooth milk chocolate with a perfectly fluid kiss	03. Coca Cola erect a ‘living billboard’ that absorbs air pollutants
04. Martor goes gory to comic effect with this billboard ad for razorblades	05. The Economist promises big ideas with a bulb that lights as you pass underneath	06. The University of Aarhus reaches out to science students with a microscopic brochure
07. Audi erects a metallic billboard where part rusts, revealing the ad over time	08. Montana Meth Project releases a striking illustration of the dangers of meth use.	09. PampaVerde uses makeup to great effect to promote the size of its Extra Big Burger
10. Pepsi leaves us in no doubt about just how light its diet soda is	11. Sony goes retro to promote the capacity of its Microvault USB memory stick	12. Beau Rivage Resort & Casino creates an unusually inviting luggage belt
13. GITAM BBDO gets noticed with spicy promotional business cards	14. Sensodyne goes minimalist with a double-take ad for toothpaste	15. A dentist launches a street campaign that’s a bit like pulling teeth
16. A Swedish horror  festival breaks from tradition to pull in the press	17. An environmental consultant puts his stamp on waste with this alternative to the business card	18. The Shoe Hospital treats footwear as patients, if this ad is to be believed
19. Amnesty launches domestic violence ad that responds to being looked at	20. A Romanian ad forces payphone users to face domestic violence	21. Stop’n Grow circulates a shopping bag that puts you right off nailbiting
22. A direct mail campaign against shark finning puts the damage in your hands	23. Alzheimer’s New Zealand creates eraser-like USB sticks to highlight memory loss	24. Superette promotes its ‘short shorts’ with a bench ad that prints right on users legs
25. Nivea makes bold claims about the power of its cellulite cream with this sofa	26. Graco uses flawless photo manipulation to promote its mattresses	27. WWF uses minimalist materials and a familiar cloud to highlight water pollution

Want more? Follow me on Posterous for daily doses of creative inspiration.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve joined the Global Editorial Team for Social Media Week (SMW) – “a global platform that connects people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social and mobile media.”

Here’s a bit more about the Social Media Week initiative, in the words of the organisers, Crowd Centric:

“Social Media Week’s mission is to explore how local and regional societies, cultures, and economies are becoming more integrated & empowered through a global network of communication. Delivered primarily through a network of internationally hosted biannual conferences and online through social and mobile media, Social Media Week brings hundreds of thousands of people together every year through learning experiences that aim to advance our understanding of social media’s role in society.”

The next SMW is due to take place September 19 – 23 2011 in:

• BEIRUT
• BERLIN
• BOGOTA
• BUENOS AIRES
• CHICAGO
• GLASGOW
• LOS ANGELES
• MILAN
• MOSCOW
• RIO DE JANEIRO
• SAO PAULO
• VANCOUVER

You can read more about the editorial team here – and look out for my first blog post, coming soon.

What does this new platform mean for PR, marketing and other comms professionals?

It’s not an easy one to answer, but here are five articles that helped me get to the heart of the matter:

1. The PR and marketing implications of Google+ by Shel Holtz. This is about as thorough as you can get right now. Shel hasn’t churned out a Google+ 101 post, he’s written an article with the uses for comms pros in mind. Read it.
2. Should PR and social media people be getting excited by Google+? by Phil Szomszor. Should we all be leaping on board and putting our campaign budgets into Google+ right now? Phil has sensible answers.
3. Conversations matter in Google+ by Chris Brogan. I have to agree with Chris’s simple but crucial observation here. The quality of conversations and responses in my stream, right now, is blowing Twitter and Facebook out of the water. If that continues, it’s a big deal for brands (particularly when the door opens to them).
4. Why Google Has the Hammer To Make Businesses Use Google Plus by Jay Baer. This is a comparatively complex article (make a cup of tea before you start reading) but it takes a really good stab at mapping the evolution of search, SEO, social, where Google+ fits in, and where it’s going. Useful stuff.
5. Google+, Businesses and Beyond by Christian Oestlien. In a video rather than a written post, Christian, a product manager on Google+ explains why it’s not quite ready for businesses yet, and gives some hints on where it might be going. Watch it below:

So, when it comes to Google+, what are your predictions, observations hopes and concerns for the comms industry?

Tonight’s #CommsChat (the weekly Twitter-based chat for comms professionals) will aim to identify the best tools out there for monitoring and evaluating social media activity. Here’s my summary of the tools I use every day.

The blurb for tonight’s chat reads: “There’s a huge array of free, freemium and paid-for choices out there – so which ones do you invest your time and money on and why? What are the lesser known tips, tricks or features you’ve found, and which tools don’t cut the mustard?”

So, here are the questions to be posed on the night, along with my top tips.

What are your top social media tools – and why?

• For getting a one window view of all the activity on every Twitter profile and Facebook Page I manage, Hootsuite
• For spreading the great stuff I read in the morning out across the day on Twitter, you can’t beat Buffer which lets me stack up quality content to go out at pre-set intervals
• For identifying the hottest trends in my Twitter stream, StrawberrJ.am is a must
• For filtering out a hashtag or keyword if I really don’t want to know the tennis result, Proxlet
• For putting some quick (but debatably fallible) numbers to influence on social networks, Klout and Peer Index
• For figuring out the behaviour and trends around a particular Twitter user, TweetStats (see also Hashtracking)
• For assessing the reach of a hashtag, tweet or even @username, TweetReach.
• For getting a quick, free overview of the reach and sentiment of an idea / campaign on the social web, SocialMention.com

Which ones are more hype that happening?

• Not keen on Klout’s +K as a measure of ‘expertise’ in certain topics. It measures ‘vote for me!’ popularity rather than true influence and is easily gamed
• Paper.li drives me crazy. Billed as a tool to bring you the best of your stream in paper form, it does work, but it’s being overused in a spammy way. Turn off those auto-tweets, people!

From dashboard to dashing about – best tips for tablets and mobiles

• For sheer simplicity, you can really beat Twitter’s official mobile app
• For managing multiple accounts, and checking on your scheduled updates, HootSuite for iPhone and HootSuite for Android are top quality

Freemium to premium – which upgrades are worth it?

• If you have more than one Hootsuite user in the office accessing the same Twitter profiles, you’ll need to upgrade, but it also cuts out the ads and gives you full access to an Outlook-like scheduling calendar, so it’s well worth it
• Buffer premium brings you the usual scheduling goodness, plus the option to have multiple admins and unlimited tweets and Twitter accounts
• TweetReach only analyses the last 50 tweets it finds in Twitter search, so if you’re looking at a very busy hashtag, it’s worth paying the $20 for a full snapshot

How are these tools helping you with strategy?

• Managing multiple feeds is time-consuming. The better the tools, the more time you can devote to actually engaging
• Knowledge is power. The more data you can get on how you’re performing, the better honed your strategy becomes

Should tools focus around ‘search’ or around ‘social’?

• I guess this is asking, should we look at a) numbers – followers, number of RTs etc, or b) engagement – depth of conversation, sentiment, reach etc?
• My answer is a little of (a), a little of (b), but ultimately you’re going to have to get your hands dirty and remember that tools are just tools – nothing automated is going to tell you everything you need to know, or do everything you need to do, that’s what comms professionals are for

The chat takes place tonight (Monday 4th July) 8-9pm UK time. Talk to you there?

Fear not, readers, I’ll be keeping up the blogging over here, but also expect to see lots of activity over on Lava’s website, LavaPR.co.uk as well as increased digital activity across Lava’s portfolio. Exciting times lie ahead!

If you’re interested in knowing more about what I’ll be doing, here’s the official announcement:

Leary Appointment Strengthens Lava’s Social Media Offering

Lava has strengthened its social media and digital offering with the appointment of former BT.com’s Senior Digital Content & SEO Manager, Emily Leary.

Emily joined the Midlands’ integrated agency this month as head of digital, reporting to managing director Matt Hammerton.

“We’ve been offering social media services and digital activity to clients as part of blended campaigns quite successfully but the insight, skills, experience and knowhow Emily possesses will take us to another level,” says Matt. “Emily and I have known each other for some time but the circumstances have never been right to work together. However, they are now and we’re delighted to welcome her to Lava.”

Emily will be offering social media consultancy and digital activity to Lava’s current clients base, which includes SO Festival, East Lindsey District Council, The Orders of St John Care Trust, The Real Cupcake Company and the Centre of Applied Positive Psychology, as well as building the consultancy’s social media division.

“I enjoyed my ten months at BT, which saw unique visitors to BT Life, the BT consumer blog, rise from 10,000 to 100,000 visitors each week, but I was keen to remain based in the Midlands,” explains Emily. “Matt and I presented at a social media event recently and things developed rapidly after that. I am really pleased to have joined an agency which has such strong foundations, incredible ambition and a great team. I am looking forward to developing Lava’s social media and digital offering, helping our current clients capitalise on opportunities as well as attracting new clients.”

Lava was established in 2006 and has grown rapidly. The Lincoln consultancy was among the Midlands’ top five most awarded agency in 2010, a finalist in the RAR Awards Best Small PR Consultancy and was crowned Outstanding Small Consultancy in last year’s Yorkshire & Lincolnshire CIPR PRide Awards.

Prior to moving in-house communications consultant and blogger, Emily, ran her own consultancy and co-founded #commschat, the weekly tweetchat based community.

So it’s Social Media Week (SMW) – “a global platform that connects people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social and mobile media.”

Some brands and agencies are leaping in head first to celebrate this most fashionable of communication channels, while others are watching from the sidelines with concerns about bandwagon jumping and hot air.

Over on #CommsChat tonight (7 Feb 8-9pm UK time), we’ll be discussing the week long set of events, and asking: does the rise of Social Media Week reflect a turning point in the acceptance of social media as part of the marketing toolkit, or only that social media is currently fashionable?

So what do you think? Are you taking part? Are you skeptical? Tune in at 8pm tonight – we’d love to hear your views.

If you’re a regular to this blog, or follow me on Twitter/Facebook, you’ll know that I run a weekly Twitter chat for comms professionals on Monday nights (8pm-9pm UK time) with my #CommsChat co-founder Adam Vincenzini.

Last night, we were honoured to have Beth Harte as our guest mod and the topic was “Integrating social media into the marketing mix“. A healthy mix of new faces and #CommsChat stalwarts took part, with 90+ contributors and 500+ tweets.

Here’s a summary of the questions Beth threw out, and a selection of the tweets each one sparked:

Q1: Have you been using social media for product development?

• @juphilpott: Absolutely. Our product IS our outstanding service to our members/cust and content found on #sm platforms help tremendously.
• @Jane63C: I see sm as vital to building relationships, communities etc so very much at the heart of a PR strategy.
• @DamnRedHead: Using SM in prod dev isn’t necessarily “crowdsourcing,” curation/aggregation can also help dev prods.
• @RachAllen: I don’t think products have to be ‘social’ – interacting with customers should be though surely?
• @LoisMarketing: Treated SM world as a public focus group — received great feedback, very helpful and supportive participants.

Q2: In regards to social media is it important to give customers the ability to provide their wants and needs? Why (not)?

• @NotFromBolton: How can you stop them, seriously. Much better to channel it into something useful surely?
• @MichaelWhite1: Customers are your wants and needs. Therefore it is important to provide for them.
• @ahhzen: Doesn’t it depend on how responsive you can be? No point asking if you can’t deal with the answers.
• @jane63c: Social media is by its nature two way communication so you must allow that engagement to build effective relationships.
• @Dan_Martin: You don’t provide them the “ability” to do it; they will do it on Twitter, Facebook etc anyway! #commschat

Q3: If customers (B2B and B2C) were complaining about price via social media, what would you do with that info?

• @jane63c: Back to engagement and two way comms complaining via sm is very public can quickly become crisis comms if not handled swiftly would probably add it to the mix of other information I had to help make a more informed pricing decision
• @RobertPickstone: Would probably add it to the mix of other information I had to help make a more informed pricing decision.
• @NotFromBolton: Learn from it. But if they come to you on price they will leave you on price. There has to be other differentiators.
• @MarcSkaf: If they are complaining about price, it is your job to show them that the value is greater than the price.
• @BethHarte: Social media isn’t always necessarily two-way. As a consumer, I might complain, but never interact with a brand.

Q4: What about “place.” If you hear via social media that you aren’t selling where people want to buy, what next? For example, I loved Putumayo World Music, but they don’t sell on on iTunes, so I don’t buy anymore. Do you have an example?

• @NotFromBolton: It’s all about trends surely. Trends of topic vs outcome. What comments are made are immaterial unless its impacting the outcome.
• @ahhzen: Does this become about volume? if enough potential customers SM to request a location then investigate it?
• @JonClements: Investigate! And tell people you’re doing so.
• @mazherabidi: Online has to be consideration here? Dunno if I can expect physical stores everywhere, but I expect online store.
• @TotMac: Is the Beatles on iTunes not a good example of this? Legal wranglings aside, customers wanted it there.

Q5: What companies do you see doing a great job with social media communication?

• @Jane63c: I think charities/not for profit sector are really getting to grips with SM, also transformed lobbying.
• @MichaelWhite1: Big fan of @XboxSupport as well (no bias, I don’t run it!).

Hungry for more? Read the full transcript here, and join in with #CommsChat next week!

“Proxlet works with Twitter.com & the most popular native clients to fight noise,” explains Aaron. “It can block annoying apps, over-talkitive users, and irrelevant hash tags. Ultimately, we want Proxlet to be the quality control tool for your tweet stream. People who love Twitter, but wish they had more control, are most certainly our target audience.”

The Proxlet system is certainly user friendly, but the list of supported clients could use some work. There’s a Chrome extension, and support for TweetDesk [EL: corrected on Proxlet.com] Tweetdeck Desktop, Twitter for iPhone, Twidroyd, Seesmic for Android and Spaz, but nothing for Tweetdeck or Hootsuite as yet.

Good stock

Aaron White, co-creator of Proxlet

Technically, the Proxlet developers know their stuff. Chris served two years on the drop.io development team and Aaron studied Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. “[I] fell in love with the startup world & hacker work ethic,” Aaron enthuses. “Chris & I met over Twitter, and when we were both publicly ‘kevetching’ about the noise, we decided to take action. Proxlet has been a fantastic learning experience both technically, and in terms of bringing value to a lot of folk.”

Impact on Twitter

So what do the pair think the impact of Proxlet might be on Twitter usage, and on apps like paper.li, known as much for irritating Twitter users en masse as it is for proving visually attractive ‘digital newspapers’?

“Anecdotally, I am seeing people using the service following more people than they did before using Proxlet,” Chris explains. “Which makes sense – we can only bring in so much information during a day, so if I turn down the knob on certain types of information, I can follow more people. In the longer term, I would like to see services be better citizens on Twitter. If they are too flagrant, people will just shut them off.”

A dream tool for spammers?

Talking of bad behaviour on Twitter, my first thought when learning of the Proxlet service was that it was clearly open to abuse. The blurb promises it will “Block apps, mute users, and filter tags on Twitter.” Are the pair concerned that people will use Proxlet to effectively pretend to follow people, just to grow their reciprocal follower numbers?

“I think Proxlet appeals to those folks who are looking to enhance the quality of their stream, rather than ‘game’ the system,” Aaron contends. “Those who try to amass a following via reciprocity tricks aren’t trying to solve a quality problem.”

“Yeah – I’m not concerned with people trying to boost follower counts,” Chris confirms. “You can usually spot those accounts from a mile away, anyway. Above a certain number, every follow is fake.”

Improving the Twitter experience

I’m not convinced that Proxlet won’t be abused a fair bit, but it’s true enough that it isn’t the only tool to make that kind of ‘gaming’ possible. But what of the argument that using a proxy is a needless step – if you don’t like the sort of stuff a person posts, unfollow?

Chris Ricca, co-creator of Proxlet

“We built Proxlet because we wanted more control over our Twitter experience,” explains Chris. “For more casual users, following and unfollowing will probably be enough. But we wanted more options. It has made Twitter useful for me again.”

“I find it very useful to mute folks who are at conferences that I am not interested in,” adds Aaron. “Sometimes, it’s enough to mute the conference’s hash-tag. However, some folks don’t always use the tag, so muting them for a few days can do the trick. Alternatively, if someone is tweeting about a live sporting event, I might throw a quick mute on them. *Especially* if they are rooting for the wrong team…”

Of course, even during the big game, you might not want to ignore people who address you directly. “We’ve tried to be careful with Proxlet to provide control, but not break the social fabric of Twitter,” assures Aaron. “You will still see a tweet if someone mentions you, or direct messages you, even if they are muted.”

The future of Proxlet

So will the developers be using the usage data they gather to help make Twitter a nicer place?

“It would be great if Proxlet could become an early warning system for spammy behavior on Twitter,” says Aaron. “Would love to share that data with folks, and offer auto-blocking features if they were valuable. We’ll be preparing an in-depth look at some of the muting trends, stay tuned! Suffice it to say, you can probably guess the top three apps or so.”

“Proxlet’s plans right now are to learn from our users and improve the experience, and thankfully our costs are low enough to let us do exactly that.”

It’s certainly an interesting proposition, but for now I’ll be keeping it old school and continuing to control the quality of my home feed by choosing who to follow wisely. Then again, those paper.li mentions are indeed incessant, so there may come a day when Proxlet’s (term filter option) becomes irresistible.

Emily

An uncharacteristically ‘new age’ title, I concede, but it’s been a while, so I thought I ought to take the time to explain why I’ve been away, and what you can expect from me in 2011.

In the last few months of 2010, lots of things happened:

• I wound down my consultancy business and went to work as Digital Content Manager at a major UK telco – I’m still there
• I got flu, twice – I’m nearly recovered after 8 long weeks of spluttering.
• I got married – this is a big deal for me, and I’m very, very happy.

So all that means that:

• I haven’t had as much time to blog as I used to – but having had a break, I’m convinced that I can MAKE time.
• I’ve been too ill to work, let alone write – now I’m better, I can’t wait to get back to it.
• I’ve changed my name to Emily Leary (@EmLeary on Twitter) – so my ‘brand’ needs to change, kinda.

So, give me a little more time and you’ll see a lot change on here. I’m going to play with the focus of the content a little to reflect what I’ve learned in the last couple of years as social media has taken centre stage. I’ll also be introducing more advice and more commentary and changing the blog’s name to reflect all this.

Stick with me. It’ll be worth it…

This is the latest guest post from Carli-Ann Smith as part of The Student Perspective series – a set of posts contributed by future stars of the comms industry…and this one may ruffle a few feathers.

‘Ça dépend’…‘Es hängt davon ab’…’Dipende’…‘Εξαρτάται’…‘Det beror’…‘Depinde’

Hmmm…I seem to be getting the impression that no matter who you ask they will tell you that: ‘It depends’ and then launch into some sort of reason why there is no set definition of the truth. I was fully expecting to look in the dictionary and it say the same.

A quick search on Google reveals that definitions range from ‘a fact that has been verified’ to ‘one of the first heavy metal albums.’

Is this lack of definition a get out clause? If there is no set definition then how can something be untrue? Most people seem to know what a lie is, so why the confusion about the truth. My theory involves context, the confusion is the context that the ‘truth’ is placed in.

It matters who you ask and at the time you ask them. Facts and figures are the truth, yes? They can be placed in different contexts. Make-up ranges claim 98% of women agree their product has been of benefit to them, you then see in the small print that only 10 women were asked, still the truth but not as you would have expected.

Back in the days when it was regarded the truth that the earth was flat, the people that said it weren’t lying, they were merely passing on what they knew. Isn’t that the job of a PR Professional? Passing on information they know? Yes and no. It is common knowledge that PR practitioners pass on certain snippets of information, some people jump on the old ‘Oh it’s all spin’ bandwagon, this is one bandwagon I would like to pull the wheels off.

Everyone is guilty of selecting certain information to pass on, the difference is we just get paid for it. Individuals do it in real life, when you are out on a date you don’t give them your whole life story and include the story about the time you were charged for stalking an ex-girlfriend. Not if you have any sense you wouldn’t! You would embroider the truth.

So when is it seen as being socially acceptable to not tell EVERYTHING that you know? What about if it would start a moral panic and cause the country to go into meltdown? Maybe the best idea at the time but then if people found out you had hidden it then you get into trouble anyway. However if the public were told everything there would be bedlam!

There needs to be an information flow, and that’s where we come in. Sometimes we are told what to say, what not to say and others we help advise the best course of action, either way the hammer drops on us…

Our job is to put a certain amount of polish on facts, but you can’t polish something that isn’t there. With the rise of the internet and social networking sites there is nowhere to hide, the truth will come out, so what is the point in blatantly lying when your reputation and that of the companies will just be tarnished when people find out the truth?

Outright lying can have serious implications, your reputation as an individual is built on many things just like the reputation of the organisation. If you had a friend that lied about everything you would become tired of speaking to them and you certainly wouldn’t listen to anything they had to say because you wouldn’t know what to believe. Therefore how can you build and maintain mutually beneficial relationships, which is included in our role as PR professionals, if your contacts know you lie to them?

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer for 2010, 72% of people said that ‘A company I can trust’ is a top driver of corporate reputation in the UK. This therefore proves that lying to your customers can have a negative effect on sales, reputation and peoples impressions on you.

According to Julian Henry in an article on PR Week, “Telling porkies can become a necessity. You might be trying to contain something fragile, volatile and potentially damaging to a large number of innocent bystanders, namely your client’s kingsize ego, which has the potential to explode without warning at any moment.”

As the face of the organisation, it is our job to be responsible and make sure that we don’t cause any unnecessary upset, whether that be our clients or to the public.

In my opinion, and it may be controversial, I think that sometimes it is better to withhold certain information if it could start a moral panic. Especially if it is information that the public don’t in fact have a ‘right’ to know. If it affects them directly, then I believe they should be told, but if the knowledge is not essential then to keep quiet is not a sin. However, where the difficultly lies is if someone asks. Now, if someone asks and you don’t tell them then ‘technically’ you are lying.

I believe it is important to distinguish between what the public need to know and what isn’t vital knowledge. My naïve advice to PR professionals is, don’t lie. When we are so successful at promoting businesses and products why are we letting PR fall into disrepute?  How on earth can we persuade people that PR isn’t about spin when the ones practicing it are playing up to the negative stereotypes that these individuals hold? You have my permission to polish but don’t take it too far and fabricate things that aren’t there.

(Kudos to Neville Hobson for his article on truth, which informed this post.)

Carli-Ann Smith