Livity celebrates one radical night on the tiles
Last night was a momentous milestone for Livity as we were recognised for our achievements at the Marketing Agency Association Best Awards. We scooped up three awards for NSPCC’s ChildLine Final Verse including Best Consumer Campaign, Best Social Media Campaign as well as Best of the Best Campaign given for overall campaign of the evening at the discretion of the judges.
Kate Brundle, Associate Director at Livity sums up the evening: “Final Verse is a project we are incredibly proud of. To create a campaign that reaches your audience with an important message and also receives industry recognition is a fantastic feeling. Winning Best Social Media Campaign and Best Consumer Campaign is an amazing achievement. We are so pleased we stood out to the judges and thank them for awarding us Best of the Best against so many other high quality campaigns.”
“Final Verse deserved this award because it was an absolutely inspired piece of work. It was built on a genuine understanding of their core male teen target group who are very difficult to reach and to get talking about ChildLine issues. Urban music, MCing and performing is at the heart of their culture and they create an authentic highly shareable idea which made it so successful in social media” said the judges.
Our rapturous celebrations were echoed at an event hosted by NESTA, for our nomination as one of ‘Britain’s 50 New Radicals’, awarding Livity with the distinction as one of the few organisations who are ‘changing Britain for the better, applying fresh approaches in practical and scalable ways, through social, technological, scientific and artistic methods’.
As The Observer pointed out in their article, “Thomas Edison famously said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” and if last night’s celebratory-antics are anything to go by we would say Livity are on the right side of genius!
The Stake
The Stake is a competition we’re doing with Channel 4 Education and Barclays, which gives young people the opportunity to pitch ideas for the chance to win a share of £100,000 and turn them into a reality…
The Stake meets the challenge of engaging young people on personal finance head on in an interactive, learn by doing, peer-to-peer led format. Throughout the competition thousands of young people will be pitching their ideas and completing various challenges along the way that help them get to grips with managing their money.
The top 20 ideas, as voted by the stakeholders on the site, will be reviewed by a panel of Channel 4 and Barclays judges and up to 6 winners will be awarded up to £20,000 prize funding for their ideas. The winners will be supported by Livity and Barclays mentors throughout the implementation of their projects.
The Stake is a non-traditional way of teaching finance or enterprise. It’s not about homework or complicated jargon. It’s about learning by doing, the process of peer-to-peer collaboration, sharing and supporting fresh ideas whilst helping to improve young people’s financial capability in the process.
Throughout all the work we do, we hold on to the belief that if you trust young people, they become trustworthy. If you give them responsibility, they become responsible. Our longest running project, Live Magazine, is a prime example of this, and so too is The Stake…
Watch The Stake TV advert here
I don’t hate you for failing…
…I love you for trying.”
One of the great thinkers of history said that.
Well, OK so actually it was Marge Simpson but there is no denying she’s got a point. This quote felt completely appropriate to me whilst attending the Wavelength Reconnect 2 event on Tuesday. The theme of the day was Leading in a Digital Age and it made me feel incredibly inspired about using digital for business, campaigns and most importantly how, in reality, digital can really change the world – for the better.
First up Richard Sambrooke who is Global Vice Chairman and Chief Content Officer at Edelman. He was Director of BBC News and then World Service where he had a sudden realisation that digital was not something he couldn’t ignore. He ran through the various networks at the disposal of leaders (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc) and his insight was that digital “commands a more humble style of leadership.”
Speakers also included a Google techie whizz Dan Cobley, Director of Comms for Starbucks Tim McCoy and Jacob Boetter.
Some of the digital wonderment included an interactive billboard, which combined speed camera technology with digital roadside billboards to tell around 200,000 drivers what the best oil for their vehicle. The idea involves a camera recognising a number plate almost instantly getting the car information from the DVLA database and then changing the billboard to recommend the right sort of oil for their car.
Other guests included Co-founder of JustGiving Anne-Marie Huby (true source of the Marge quote) and Patrick Meier who set up Ushahidi.
Ushahidi is the Swahili term for ‘witness or testimony’ and is crowd-sourced platform that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. The website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phones. The technology has since been used to support rescue efforts for the Haiti earthquake and the tsunami in Japan. Check it out:
So from one extreme (selling car oil) to another (saving lives) digital is without a doubt powerful tool that can be used to help solve the problems of mankind.
So on that note, I’m with Marge, we must at least try.
Intro to Google +
Livity’s resident social media enthusiast and early adopter beccarothwell shares her thoughts on new platform that everyone’s Tweeting, Facebooking and now Plusing about…Google+
A lot has been written about Google+ in the last three weeks, although Facebook and Twitter are still dominating online chatter. This may seem counter-intuitive to anyone working in social media but it’s not that surprising when you consider how much that has been written about Google+ includes the inevitable comparison to these social giants. This post won’t be any exception; however something has become increasingly clear over the past two weeks. Google+ is not the new Facebook, Google+ is the new Twitter in a Facebook skin.
The key difference is that of symmetrical vs asymmetrical connections. On Facebook connections are symmetrical, if you friend someone they must friend you back. Consequently your connections on Facebook are more likely to be with people you know and trust in real life, and at the very least you know who you’re sharing with. Contrast Twitter where connections are asymmetrical and you can follow or be followed without reciprocating. Your updates are publicly broadcast and connections are often based on common interest rather than familiarity; so you may not know who you’re sharing with but there is an increased opportunity to spread your message, discover interesting content, and forge new relationships.
As on Twitter, so on Google+ where connections are asymmetrical; however unlike Twitter not everything you say need be public. To follow someone on Google+ you must add them to a circle; a list that categorises your connection to that person or the reason you’re following them. These circles provide two levels of control; over whose content you’re reading and who can see the content you share. Neither feature is new, they are provided to an extent on both Facebook and Twitter, but I suspect these features are either underused or unknown on each platform. Not so on Google+ where listing, or rather ‘circling’, is a integral part of how you connect.
Default circles provided by Google+ are Family, Friends, Acquaintances and Following; the last of these described as “people who you don’t know personally, but whose posts you find interesting”. In other words the sort of people who you would follow on Twitter, not Facebook. This is important to understand when considering who you’re sharing with; you can share publicly, with your extended circles (friends of friends), your circles (everyone you’re following), specific circles, or specific individuals. If you’re thinking of Google+ like Facebook you may choose to share a private update with just your circles, but remember this probably includes your Following circle, people you don’t actually know. Shifting your understanding to use Google+ as you would Twitter makes much more sense.
Despite these comparisons it is important to also consider how Google+ is different. There is a point to be made that although many aspects of Google+ already exist elsewhere the combination of these features into one platform represents something entirely new. Secondly, although there are familiar aspects Google+ has the potential to go much further with unique features like hangouts, as well as an integration with Google’s pantheon of other products including Gmail, Google Documents, Blogger, Picassa, YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Search etc. This isn’t just another social platform, this is the integrated socialisation of your entire web experience. Google don’t need to bring people to Google+, they can introduce Google+ to everyone who already has a Google account.
So what does Google+ mean for digital marketeers? At this point it’s hard to say, although Google+ has grown at an astonishing speed, hitting 20 million users in three weeks despite limiting entry, it is difficult to predict how many users if any will switch their attention from other platforms. Twitter and Facebook provide different formats for conversation with different types of audience. How this new hybrid platform will come to be used, the opportunities the product integration may provide, and the potential implications for SEO (this is Google) will be interesting. The latter though may have potentially serious implications for increasing the problem of The Filter Bubble.
Exposure
This is the second post from Josh Connell, one of Livity’s Junior Account Managers, about his experience as a 2011 Marketing Academy scholar.
One of the major aspects of the Marketing Academy that attracted me was the exposure it gives you to such talented and experienced people. I wholeheartedly believe my personal development in marketing over the last 3 years is largely due to the amazing people I’ve been fortunate enough to work for and with. Even a couple of hours spent listening to someone share their thoughts and opinions is time well spent. And that’s what makes the mentoring element of the Marketing Academy so special.
My first mentoring session was with Ellen Marzell, Global Sponsorship Director of Sports Brands. Ellen has held international business development and sales roles at IMG Media, WPP/Global Sportnet, In Game Advertising Worldwide and the Perform Group and has over twenty years experience in sponsorship, marketing and media.
Since my mentoring session I’ve been contemplating all the interesting insights and learnings Ellen kindly shared with me. I loved discussing the ins and outs of sponsorship and how brands need to find the best way to communicate with their audience.
I‘m now looking more critically at brand sponsorships and looking not just at who’s making great connections but who’s really creating a relationship and a conversation with their audience. I read an interesting article in the Evening Standard about a piece of Kantar research suggesting that only 20% of fans knew Carling was the backer of the League Cup. Simply securing a sponsorship deal clearly isn’t enough to create brand awareness and brand affinity with the target audience. Budweiser must ensure their recent sponsorship deal with the FA Cup goes beyond the norm and uses the brand’s leverage to put the fans at the heart of the competition. Fans choosing the Man of the Match award for each FA Cup game is a great idea already in the pipeline. Fan punditry may be a step too far but it would be a revolutionary shake up elevating Budweiser to new levels of sponsorship stardom.
The one on one time with Ellen was invaluable and the opportunity to get to know Ellen will no doubt stand me in good stead. I think perhaps the greatest challenge for the year ahead is retaining all of the advice and insights I’m picking up. My sponge-ability (for want of a better phrase) is being put to the test and I can’t wait for my next mentoring session…