Laurence Borel

I somehow manage to squeeze two fab exhibitions last Friday night which are definitely worth a blog post. When fashion becomes art, fashionistas can certainly rejoice!

Hermès - Leather Forever at the Royal Academy of Arts

Celebrating Hermès’ 175th anniversary, the exhibition traces Hermès’ history  which began as  saddle and harness-maker, to one of the most famous handbag, leather and accessories brand in the world.  The exhibition also plays host to some of the brand’s famed artisans, who will show you how the bags are made. Each handbag is made by hand and takes anything between 15 – 24 hours work to create. The price tag and waiting lists are definitely justified when you see the artisans at work. The whole process is mesmerising!

Christian Louboutin at the Design Museum 

When Facebook announced their new advertising packages earlier, this year, I was particularly excited to hear about about their Log Out Experience premium package.

Previously, when users logged out of Facebook, they were redirected to the logged-out home page that prompts users to either login or register a new account. Now the page can feature a very large and prominent ad, which replaces the signup portion of the page that is not relevant to users who already have Facebook accounts. And at 75K for 24-hours, this option doesn’t come cheap, although according to my sources at Facebook, 8 millions users log out of their account daily which potentially represents a large number of impressions for advertisers.

Blackberry is the first UK advertiser I’ve spotted so far, although, I don’t tend to log out of my account that much. The Log Out Experience is pleasant enough, but the only downside is that you would have to log back into your account to Like, comment on, or share the ad.

If you’re planning on throwing some cash into Facebook advertising, you’re definitely better off redirecting users to an external site, rather than asking them to engage with your ad on Facebook.

Have you spotted any other UK brands splashing out on Log Out premium ads so far?

I had a bit of a nightmare week-end with my website, when I accidentally deleted my blog database (big thanks to my kick arse host, Hostgator for fixing my site in less than no time) followed my an email from Uygar mentioning that my site had been infected.

I can’t even fix my own database myself, so let’s not even think about malware removal!  After a quick Googling, I found sucuri.net, an awesome Malware removal tool. For $89.99 per year, they’ll check your site regularly for malwares and will clean up the mess. Which is exactly what they did for me remotely in less than 24 hours, and submitted my site for Google Blacklist status review. Even if you use the service once, it’s totally worth the money.

You can scan your website for free here and sign up there.

Thanks again for fixing my site Sucuri Security!

I was going through my old university essays (there’s a good reason for that, which I’ll share with all of you in the next few weeks) and found an old consumer behaviour dissertation written 2002 (I am not getting any younger!) around the use of celebrities in advertisements.

The topic of the essay was (note the terminology ‘persuasion’ instead of ‘influence’):

Many celebrities who are considered to be persuasive role models appear in advertisements in Britain Does the use of celebrities in such advertisements constitue and effective practice?

Back in the day, I argued that endorsement strategies can be effective in almost any market and could help with product differentiation. 10 years on, and I certainly wouldn’t trust a celebrity. Do I really think that Cheryl Cole uses L’Oreal hair-dye? Nope, besides she has extensions!

Nowadays, we have a little  thing called social media where real people endorse products, and generate positive word of mouth. And word of mouth is a lot cheaper than traditional advertising, or celebrity endorsements.

But as brands are jumping on the social media bandwagon, some bloggers and vloggers now want to get paid to blog/vlog about brands, and in my opinion are losing their influence as a result. I totally understand why they want to get paid, but I’ve said it before, there are better ways to monetise a site.

There are some wonderful blogger/brands collaborations out there, but there are also some dreadful ones, like this iJustine Doritos video.

I like iJustine. The video that made her famous really influenced people, and ultimately AT&T eventually reviewed their billing ystem. But the Doritos collaboration is a bad endorsement, and does not influence me in the slightest. YouTube commenters agree with me.

Paid for PR initiative/brand collaborations annoy me rather than influence me, and lack genuine word-of-mouth, which is what social media was originally all about.

Can influencers lose their influence by collaborating with the wrong brands and in the wrong way? I very much think so.

Photo via 

I am currently in the middle of doing some research around digital influence and consumer behaviour when Wired’s What a Klout Score Really Means conveniently popped in my stream, giving me the opportunity to develop my thinking.

I was horrified to find out about Sam Fiorella not getting the job he went for on the basis of his Klout score despite having 15 years marketing experience. It’s not something that would happen in the UK.  in hindsight our relationship with social media as a nation, is very different from that in the US.

Let’s all get out of our bubble for a sec and take a look at the real (non-digital) world around us.  We, as a nation, are a lot less active in social media than our American counterparts. In fact most of my offline friends (i.e. my non-digital marketers friends) hardly use Facebook.

I remember walking into a random pub in New York a couple of years ago, and started talking Twitter strategy with the landlord; this would never happen in the UK! The bottom line is that we are a lot less active and influenced by social media than our American friends. And we, marketers, maybe care less about Klout and influence as a result.

The excellent Influencers documentary which came out last year, offers a number of interesting definitions of influence. My favourite definition, and arguably the most relevant when it comes to defining online influence, is by Sky Gellatly:

Influence is  someone who’s respected and whose opinion is very valued. 

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION by RICREATIVE

From watching the video in full, it’s quite clear that there are different types of influence, and as such services such as Klout or PeerIndex will never be able to evaluate these different types of influence with an algorithm. There will always be a human element involved in understanding whether a Tweet was retweeted because the content was interesting, or whether the Tweet was retweeted because it genuinely had an impact on the person and swayed their opinion.

When Klout’s algo was originally created in 2007, Fernandez was onto something:  building an algorithm that measured who sparked the most subsequent online actions. However social media has evolved, and an action no longer means influence. We are Retweets and Likes junkies, even  for the least digitally-savvy amongst us.

What Klout does an OK job at, however, is measuring interests and areas of expertise (primarily) through lists. Perhaps this terminology should be more widely adopted moving forward?

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post titled Should bloggers get paid to write blog posts? which caused quite a stir at the time.

I haven’t changed my mind; I don’t think bloggers should get paid to write blog posts. Sponsored posts are not authentic, and bloggers who accept payment will eventually lose their credibility and influence.

There are better ways of monetising a site such as affiliate marketing, banners, blogging for brands, or in the case of extremely successful bloggers, collaborating with brands.

I spotted a post on the Independent Fashion Bloggers community earlier which caught my eye, as it appears (some) Pinners are getting paid to pin. Fashion blogger Fashionista, wrote an in-depth post about these Super Pinners which can be classified into a number of categories:

- Those who pin for brands: there are Community Managers, guest bloggers/Instragrammers out there, so why not guest Pinners?

- Pinning to enhance your job prospects; I got my job through social media, and I am pleased to see that Pinterest is being used as visual CV by creative types

And the not so good:

- Sponsored Pins: now this is when I get worried; how are Pinners disclosing their pins are sponsored? One way around this would be to create a dedicated ‘Sponsored Pins’ board

- Pinterest agents; I have dealt with a blogger’s agent in the past and they she was friendly and professional. But there are also sharks out there who take advantage of bloggers lured by money. I understand why bloggers want to monetise their sites, however I feel the industry should educate bloggers about the difference between PR, advertising and affiliate agencies, and why not point them in the direction of planners/buyers who will be interested in paying for advertising space/links. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Do you feel bloggers ask to get paid more frequently than they did a few years ago, or is that about the same?  How do you feel about paying influencers to post?

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Paddy Power recently created an advert which was banned just 4 days after airing on TV; of course the video ended up on their Youtube channel and went viral.

Today, Paddy Power were promoting the #ChavTranquiliser hashtag on Twitter coinciding with the Cheltenham Races. Betting is not exactly my cup of tea, and the tone of voice they used doesn’t particularly appeal to me. It seems that the promoted trend was used to get Twitterers to send pictures and videos of the Cheltenham Festival, which were then promoted.

What bothers me however is the Tweet below; Note the typo in their own hashtag!

You wouldn’t slag off another brand through advertising, why do it through social and via a promoted trend? In fact Twitter’s Promoted Products Policy states that:

I. Promote honest and authentic content.

Promoted Trends cannot reference a person, product, or service in a confusing way, without authorization.

IX. Respect rights of privacy, publicity and intellectual property.

1. Your Promoted Products copy, including Tweet text, keyword selection, and trend descriptions should not infringe or misappropriate the rights of others, including rights of privacy, publicity, or intellectual property.

It appears that Paddy Power have broken Twitter’s Promoted Product Policy by mentioning Burberry in their Tweet. It would be nice to see tougher and clearer guidelines implemented to protect brands from negative Tweets by other brands. Think before you type!

Even though Burberry may have had a chav reputation in the past, they’ve worked really hard on their image. In fact Burberry is probably one of my favourite fashion brands in social/digital; everything they do only is simply beautiful and cleverly orchestrated.

What do you think? Was the Tweet simply tongue is cheek or did Paddy Power go too far?

I was looking for a new book to read when Nick Burcher contacted me the other day about his recently published booked Paid, Owned, Earned.

Paid, Owned, Earned is about the complexity of media channels confronting brands, agencies and advertisers. With a multitude of case studies and original thinking it provides a clear framework on how best to approach the fragmented media landscape.

“The complexity of media that now sees multiple channels accessed through multiple devices has created major challenges for today’s marketing and advertising professionals. Consumer time is split between TVs, laptops, iPads, X-Boxes and smartphones, with traditional media, websites, videos, social networks and apps all competing for attention, meaning it’s difficult for brands to decide how best to reach and engage their audiences. Paid, Owned, Earned defines the constituents of each area of ‘paid’, ‘owned’ and ‘earned’ media and shows how they are linked together. It proposes a blueprint for how to think and navigate across this space using a framework made up of key elements such as communities and content, social media optimisation, seeding and viral distribution, broadcast mass media, social performance media and measurement.”

Here’s a sample of the book below, or buy it on Amazon! I’ve bought the book and will review in another blog post at some point!

Paid Owned Earned by Nick Burcher

Like many social media marketers, I watched with great interest the first fMC conference last night. Facebook have announced the launch of the expected new Timeline style for brand pages and it is expected that all pages will be automatically migrated to the new design by 30th March. If you are a page owner, you can migrate right away when you log into your page, and some UK brands such as Marks and Spencer or Manchester United have already made the the move.
The  key changes include the look and feel of the brand’s page, fan initiated private messaging capability to communicate with fans (wich will be huge for customer service), access to pages through mobile at long last (I believe 22 million people access Facebook through mobile), and new opportunities to reach audiences with a greater on amplifying stories and content.

Here are 5 things to think about before placing your brand on timeline: 

1) Create a new cover for your brand; this new header image and profile picture should now be used as a welcome image and tab, as all users will land on this page. We saw some really cool examples of covers when Timeline launched for users, why not experiment a little?

2) Tabs/Apps: You now only have 4 tabs/apps vs. 9 tabs (above the fold) previously. Choose carefully; Obama’s tabs of choice are photos, videos, donate and store. The size of the tabs is much smaller now, so you might want to think about the size of your apps and perhaps go back to the drawing board.  Welcome tabs/like-gates are now redundant under the new Timeline format, as Facebook want to streamline the user experience across all pages.  You could however have a call to action under your description to encourage fan to click on your Welcome tab or you ‘Like to enter’ competition tab instead. Goodbye Like-gates!

3) Add Milestones; Milestones offer an opportunity to tell a story around your brand. Manchester United have done this very well, going back to 1900s when the club was founded

4) You will now have the ability to pin one key post to the top of your page, so why not pin an engaging status update to start with. This post will
be available until you make a new pin or after 7 days if not replaced, it will revert back to its Timeline place. This will make it much easier to highlight important message(s) or key campaigns especially as the new style will not allow for a default landing page. Marks and Spencer have been having tons of fun pinning Percy the Pig on their Timeline!

5) Last but certainly not least,  don’t forget to tell your fans about the new Timeline

Facebook advertising

There were also some interesting announcements in terms of Facebook advertising. You will still be able to use Standard ASUs, Like Ads, Sponsored Stories and Page Post ads, however Facebook will now offer a new Premium advertising format, Offer Advertising, as well as access to two new advertising packages: Reach Generator and Log Out Experience.

I had a sneak preview at Log Out Experience today and it’s seriously exciting! 8 million unique users in the UK log out of their Facebook session daily, so the Log Out Experience represents a great opportunity for advertisers to promote their products in an engaging and innovative way.

Enough about ads! What are your favourite brands on Timeline so far?

I recently purchased a gorgeous Exit Tube sign from Pedlars and Tweeted them how pleased I was with my purchase.

After a quick snoop on the Pedlars website and social profiles, I asked Pedlars founders the Gladstones,  if they would be up for an interview for my blog, as I was curious to see how they used, and felt about social media marketing as an SME.

This is quite a long interview, and I’ve added some of my key take-outs at the end of the post. Looking forward to your thoughts and comments!

Can you give me a brief overview of what your business is about and how it all started?

I have various businesses; Pedlars, Hawarden Estate Farm Shop, an organic farm and a pub, The Glynne Arms, soon to open (1st May). Pedlars has three shops but is mainly an ecommerce business. The Farm Shop has no ecommerce business but employs 50 people on the shop floor. My wife and I  have also recently written a book for Random House called The Pedlars Guide To Outdoor Living.

I’ve noticed that your website redirects to both your Facebook Fan and personal profile. From a marketing point of view, how do these channels differ? Do you share different content on both channels?

We do share, but we think that they are both quite distinct. The Fan Page is brand new but before we launched it last month, we just had a normal ‘family’ profile that we hoped would connect people, obliquely, with our brands. This was quite transparent and honest; it was about us, and it was not designed to sell. We strongly feel that if we treat our customers as friends and are open and welcoming then they will treat us in the same way. It generally works well; I don’t think we’ve ever had a negative comment on our fan page; the comments are happy and positive. So, we connect with our ‘friends’ and they connect with us.

This works for all of our businesses. To be honest, I am not very active on Facebook, but it does act as a portal for Twitter, Tumblr and the blog we do. One thing I should mention is that I deliberately set out to make our blog, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest names different because I believe in the value of people having to root around a bit and seek us out. Our customers are clever; they enjoy finding us. I want these things to be resolutely uncommercial and this is the core way in which they will differ from the new Pedlars Facebook and Twitter things; it took me a long time to be convinced of the need for straight-ahead Pedlars Facebook pages, not least of all because up until now I have written every single word that is published anywhere for Pedlars.

What’s the most successful channel in terms of conversion (i.e. sales) Hard to tell what is most successful; probably the blog, where from time to time I write about Pedlars stuff?

I have built the blog up slowly but surely and now I can get 1,500 page views a day if I post on something that people like. And this gets tweeted about by me and posted on Facebook. Blogs seem to be much less commonly followed in the UK than the US, which I find weird because they really, truly are the way forward for those of us who enjoy ideas and images, whatever the subject. Twitter can pass an idea on quickly, of course and if you ask people to RT, they are kind. Facebook is a tremendous source of word-spreading; I regret holding off on the Pedlars one for so long.

You have a highly visual business, do you find that bloggers/Twitterers share pictures of the items you sell in social media? Bearing this in mind, have you ever considered using Pinterest to market your business?

People do share what we do and I have joined Pinterest because people had been pinning about Pedlars’ stuff. I haven’t really got to grips with it yet because I am quite busy (we also have six children and that sort of thing) but I can tell it is going to explode. I think Tumblr is a particularly fine and simple medium for visual people. I have a Tumblr page and wish I had started my blog on that and not WordPress, which seems a bit flat and unsexy in comparison. What I LOVE about Pinterest, by the way, is the positive vibes at its core; try to be nice. This is my thing, too. I cannot bear the viciousness and back biting that characterise much web chat.

Finally, would you say that social media can successfully help small businesses increase their awareness and ultimately sales. Or is it just good for awareness?

I think this is really difficult to get this right, much more so than people think; people are clever, they can see through social media, which is nothing more than bad advertising. Do it well, though and you raise awareness and respect and that simply must help your business.

Here are some of my key take-outs from this interview:

• Facebook timeline or Facebook Fan Page? The Gladstones started with a profile and recently launched their Pedlars Fan Page: ‘it was about us, and it was not designed to sell. We strongly feel that if we treat our customers as friends and are open and welcoming then they will treat us in the same way.’  They are treating customers as friends, not fans. The word fan in itself puts the customer a step further away from the brand.

• Commercial social profiles vs. uncommercial social profiles; yes if you work agency-side, you’ll need to demonstrate the ROI of your digital efforts. But if you work client-side why not set up a Tumblr blog or an Instagram or Pinterest account, and inspire your fans; What I LOVE about Pinterest, by the way, is the positive vibes at its core; try to be nice.

• And last but certainly not least, I really like this final quote, which clearly defines the role of various channels: Blogs truly are the way forward for those of us who enjoy ideas and images, whatever the subject. Twitter can pass an idea on quickly, of course and if you ask people to RT, they are kind. Facebook is a tremendous source of word-spreading. 

Big thanks to Charlie Gladstone for taking the time to answer my questions!