On July 20th while on her summer vacation Barbie launched a Video Girl Scavenger Hunt to promote her latest career as the multi-media Video Girl Barbie doll across San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York and used her social media assets to promote it.

Let’s take a look at her assets and how they were used:

• All Doll’d Up: Barbies’ blog where she dishes on the hottest parties and latest fashion trends was used to announce the scavenger hunt.

• Celebrity profile on Foursquare: Scavenger hunt participants needed to follow the doll and check-in to the same location as part of the hunt.

• @BarbieStyle twitter handle: Barbie tweeted out text, photo and video clues to her over 17,000 followers about her whereabouts in the different cities.

In each case, the winner of the hunt had to either present something pink to the street teams or prove their Foursquare check-in at the location on their mobile phone or show the original Barbie tweet of the clue. The first to find Barbie and her team in each of the cities received a Barbie Video Girl doll.

Barbie also partnered with Twitter influencer and video blogger, iJustine, to promote the new doll. iJustine led a video tour of the Mattel factory on the YouTube Channel (uploaded on July 14th and currently has over 880,000 views).

When I first saw the news, I was a bit surprised by the tactic – I know Foursquare is HOT right now, but I didn’t think tweens were getting in on the action just yet. However, according to Lauren Dougherty, director of Barbie marketing at Mattel, tweens were never the target for this campaign. In an interview with Promo Magazine, Dougherty recapped the major role social media played in last year’s 50th Anniversary campaign and through those efforts they discovered Barbie’s a doll for girls of all ages. She also notes that fifty percent of the brand is licensing, including adult products, entertainment and a collectors business. And where to target those older audiences: why, social media of course.

As part of the 50th anniversary campaign, Barbie launched a Facebook fan page – where she currently has over 445,000 Likes. At launch, the content was more feature-driven and about shaping Barbie as a person—what she likes, what she does, but this year the content has evolved to include more marketing promotions, such as:

Don’t worry boys and girls, Ken hasn’t been forgotten about. According to insiders at Mattel, Barbie’s dreamy ex is getting ready for a social media break out of his own later this year. Given the 2004 highly publicized breakup, fans can expect to see him either giving or asking for relationship advice or possibly even reconciliation for the two love birds? We’ll be looking out.

The event highlighted the growing importance of Facebook as much more than a way to share the minutiae of our daily lives with our “friends.” Today, thousands of brands use Facebook Pages as a way to engage and interact with their “fans.”  Among some of the most successful company pages are Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker (currently the #1 page on Facebook).

The event was broken out into three presentations by Facebook staffers, including Randi Zuckerberg (sister of Mark), who handles marketing for the social networking powerhouse. Attendees picked up insight about how Facebook uses Facebook for PR; how to use ads more effectively; and, how to enhance streaming video via the Facebook platform.

Facebook also introduced a brand-new page, “PR on Facebook,” dedicated to sharing “best practices and conversations around using Facebook for PR.” To date, more than 6,700 people have “liked” the PR on Facebook page. As Journalistics blogger, Jeremy Porter put it, “by strengthening its relationships with public relations professionals, and showing us the right ways to leverage Facebook for PR, the company is making great strides at getting us all to ‘Like’ them more.” I agree.

For a little instant gratification, what follows is a quick sampling of some of the tips for brands shared at last week’s event. Full-length video of the presentations can now be viewed online via the PR on Facebook page.

• Use the Facebook Notes application to share much more with your followers outside of standard status updates, for example:
  • Use Notes to post Q&As with executives or industry experts; customer case studies or ongoing blog posts; this can help create a useful resource for your followers, including the media
  • Invite guests to share content via your Facebook Notes; For example, Facebook invites celebrities like Arianna Huffington, Cristiano Ronaldo and others to guest blog for them using Facebook Notes

• Send targeted updates to your followers based on specific location or language; feature will soon include gender and age targeting.

• When paired with a Facebook event invite, Facebook ads can serve as a powerful way to capture the attention of your followers and draw them to your next event.

• Use Facebook Insights, the site’s analytics dashboard, to better understand the people that follow your brand.

• Install the LiveStream Box on your website via a simple plugin and enable Facebook users to connect, share and post updates in real-time as they witness your streaming video events (i.e. executive speeches, webcasts or presentations). CNN in partnership with Facebook had significant success using this plugin for its online, streaming coverage of the Obama Inauguration and Michael Jackson memorial.

Overall, it was a good event and nice to see Facebook taking note of the growing influence that PR has over the corporate social media agenda. It was also beneficial to further understand how to advise clients about Facebook.

Research has shown a positive correlation between the time a business invests in its online presence and its success. A study of the world’s 100 most valuable brands, carried out by Text 100 and Context Analytics, showed that a business’s media presence can be responsible for approximately a quarter of its value. The 2008 Interbrand Best Global Brands Report found that 27 percent of the differences between brand values could be attributed to media presence. Considering the explosive growth of social media in recent years, this percentage is likely to increase in the future.

But this growth has opened up new questions: Is it even possible to manage a business’s media presence and image? With consumers’ influence on brand image expanding thanks to their new role as prosumers, how much power do they now wield?
Democratization of the Web is changing the way people form opinions. In the past conversations and topics were restricted to a consumer’s social circle. These days conversations are available for everyone to see and opinions are exchanged at a global level. We trust recommendations from digital friends, experts and celebrities more than businesses.

Transparency, openness, honesty and a focus on dialogue have become the fundamental building blocks of successful marketing communications. The new requirements of the digital age are forcing brand managers to rethink conventional wisdom. Despite this, a recent survey published by PR Week found that 70 percent of brand managers have never used feedback from social media to improve products or services. All too often businesses hesitate to introduce online branding activities for fear of losing control of their brands. Many do not even trust their employees’ social media habits; how can they expect consumers to trust their brand?

Join us as we discuss the opportunities and challenges presented by online branding with a panel of industry experts.
• Dr. Tim E. Fischer, Ravensburger AG, Innovation and Digital Business Development
• Hermin Charlotte Hainlein, Coca Cola, Manager Consumer Communications
• Yousef Hammoudah, MTV Networks, Head of Interactive Product Development & Management
• Alexander Lengen, Paypal, Senior Manager Corporate Communications
• Michael Umlauf, brandamazing, Brand Consultant
• Hosted by Ines Bieger, Text 100, Managing Consultant and Lars Basche, Text 100, EMEA Social Media Consultant
The event is aimed at visitors to the Medienwoche@IFA, communications and marketing professionals, business executives, media representatives, bloggers and other opinion leaders.

Fast-forward almost fifteen years, and that dream was still very much alive – I thought I was going to be the next Katie Couric (or San Francisco’s own Amber Lee) when I graduated high school. Sports reporter? Maybe. Weathergirl? Possibly. Public relations account executive? Unlikely. I traded sunny California for the harsh winters at Syracuse University (go Orange!) – based on the school’s strong broadcast journalism program.

At my first broadcast journalism class – my first foray into the world of mass media – my professor drilled into my mind that there is no such thing as being “just” a reporter anymore. A reporter is much more than that: a photographer, story-teller and editor. While chasing people down for an interview in 10 degree weather (with a negative wind chill of course), I learned this fact the hard way. For local stations I was writing, editing, panicking and begging.  While a lot has changed in my three years since graduating, including my profession, my professor was right about one thing: the idea of being “just” a reporter is dead.

After holding down multiple internships at various television stations throughout the country and graduating Syracuse, I landed as a newscast writer at San Francisco’s NBC affiliate, KNTV. Although the hours were less than pleasant (2:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. each day!), I learned that even my title as newscast writer was not 100% accurate. Aside from writing dozens of stories each morning, I would personally pick the video that would accompany each story, write headlines (I’m now the queen of alliteration) and write for KNTV’s up and coming interactive Website.

In just my 2.5 years since I’ve joined Text 100 and left the broadcast bunch behind (still the queen of alliteration!), the television industry has dramatically changed. Reporters at KNTV I still keep in touch with have active Twitter and Facebook accounts, detailing to the public stories they are covering and breaking news.  Friends working at various television stations across the country tell me that it is required that they use Twitter for their job – to get the word out on breaking news, and encourage viewers to tune into their station.

As social media tools continue to play an integral role in our lives, the tools will take on an added responsibility – and the broadcast industry needs to be ahead of that curve to keep viewers tuning in each night at 11:00 a.m. (or, at 5:00 a.m. if you are watching the shows I wrote for!).

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics  present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education.

I like this idea of processing information to make it visually appealing and sexy, making people being more intelligent after digesting it. Yes indeed, infographics isn’t new … but has been constantly underestimated or underused by the PR industry, while it has exploded all over the Internet in the past 5 years, thanks to passionnate designers. And at the era of Social Media, infographics are having a second youth. Hereunder is a quick round-up, along with some recommendations to keep in mind for using infographics in the world of communication.

Information has also to be beautiful – infographics Showcase
Information doesn’t only need to be distributed. It also need to be beautiful. Hereunder, some good example of what good infographics can look like: http://visualisationmagazine.com/100datavis.htm

Of course, this is just a selection, I’m pretty sure you’ll find many more of them during your Internet wanderings.
Looking for some more? Then I’d recommend you to have a look here: http://delicious.com/search?p=infographic

And for the pleasure of the eyes : http://ffffound.com/home/maysun/found/

Infographics for communication
And what infographics can bring to communication and PR? We – in PR – are in the work of spreading information, educating and interesting people with good quality information. And companies have loads of data to communicate about. By offering not only corporate messages, but also education and intelligence to understand complex data systems and situations, companies are building strong connection with their audience based on trust.
Yet, infographics are traditionnaly built by journalists (see the NYT and its fabulous infographics) and designers.

Some best practices
The social media age perfectly fits to infographics – both with the platform and the format aspect. If your infographic is a still image, then FlickR is the perfect place to host it (because of the social aspect of the website, but also because they already have a strong community of infographic fans – have a look a the Infographics pool, or this group, or this one, or this one, etc …). The community is already pretty strong and structured with big blogs. Looking for some inspiration? Have a look here :

• http://flowingdata.com/
• http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/
• http://infosthetics.com/
• http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

There is of course plenty of other outstanding blogs discussing about Data Visualization and Infographics
Still images aren’t the only format for infographics. Video are also a weapon of choice (not only on Youtube, but also Vimeo).
Finally, Flash animations are an extrordinary way to offer not only information, but also interaction with it. But to facilitate the communication about it, they’ll have to be embeddable, or to offer screenshots that are easily embeddable on external websites along with source links.

Interested to go further / give a try by yourself?
Here is some tools to start with playing data for you, courtesy of Google and IBM. You can also have a look at the work of Neoformix and also the famous Gapminder.

Any suggestion to share? Help yourself on the comment section hereunder

[Update] : the IBM Many Eyes link has been corrected, thanks to Lars

Facebook and MOL sign micropayment partnership

Facebook and Malaysia-based MOL Global today announced a partnership that  will broaden the social network’s asia-wide payment options.

Using the MOL Points micropayment system, Facebook users will be able to purchase Facebook’s Facebook Credit through MOL’s online portals or pay through more than 540,000 physical, online and mobile channels in 73 countries worldwide.

According to the press release, “Facebook Credits enable users to buy and spend virtual currency in more than 150 applications on Facebook from many leading developers, eliminating the frustration of having to enter payment details separately for each application. Every month, more than 70 percent of Facebook members engage with applications on Facebook Platform.”

This step will  extend the number of ways consumers can purchase Facebook Credits, especially for those who are reluctant to use credit cards for online purchases. As social networks become more pervasive and seek new ways to monetize their platforms, ensuring consumer confidence and convenience will be critical.

Learning lessons from established micropayment options such as Twitpay, SecondLife’s Linden Dollars, and  World of Warcraft’s WoW Gold, it will be interesting to see  how MOL Points changes Asian consumer adoption of Facebook Credits.

Thanks to zhiQ for the photo and breaking this news.

With the rise of social and the changing winds in the media industry, is the role of the PR professional dead as we know it? Absolutely not. In fact, as Aedhmar noted during the panel, “with the evolution of communications landscape, the role of the PR professional is more paramount than ever.” In order to service clients better and surf through the changing waters, it is important for PR professionals to have a steady finger on the pulse of the industry and what the public is using.

For example, while social media is undoubtedly huge and here for good, what may be hot in the social media landscape now, may not be so next month. Pointing to the fall of the once dominant MySpace, Aedhmar noted the necessity of not just knowing the hot tools of the moment, but also what drives users and consumers to these tools. Understanding how and why social media tools are trending is a key importance for every PR professional.

Panelists who spoke alongside Aedhmar included Matt Harrington, Edelman U.S. President and CEO; Peter Land, PepsiCo Beverages Americas, SVP, Communications; and Martin Murtland, Dow Jones & Company, VP, Solutions for Corporate Communications.

I spoke with Aedhmar briefly after the panel to get her key takeaway – the importance for PR pros to make messages distinctly heard above the continuous chatter:

This icon of chocolate goodness seems harmless. Greenpeace, however, has pressured Nestlé to stop using palm oil in its products, citing deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and endangered species loss.

They placed a video on YouTube connecting dead Indonesian orang-utan fingers with Nestlé’s famous KitKats chocolate finger confectionary. Nestlé lobbied to have the video removed, citing copyright infringement. Naturally the video popped up all over the web. Greenpeace’s supporters also attacked Nestlé’s Facebook fan page. They used anti-Nestlé slogans instead of profile pictures – distorting the Nestlé “KitKat” logo into Nestlé “Killer”.

Nestlé threatened to delete comments from people who misused their brand. The company’s forum moderator insulted the company’s attackers. Nestlé was portrayed as a company that wanted to stifle criticism – not defend its trademarks.

Ultimately, they apologized for being rude, and stopped deleting posts. But the damage had been done. Nestlé didn’t seem to have a plan when its Facebook channel came under assault. On the upside, they have become a cautionary tale for the thousands of brands on Facebook.

Now if it will please the jury, may I present defence exhibit B – a jar of vegemite.

Vegemite is a pungent dark-brown yeast-extract that antipodeans spread on their toast.  To launch a new cheese flavoured spread, manufacturer Kraft created a public naming competition, subsequently putting the nameless product on shelves. Kraft received 48,000 entries and ultimately selected “iSnack 2.0” as the winner.

This name was met with almost universal condemnation. Thousands of comments flew across Twitter. 35 Facebook pages and 161 Facebook groups were created to condemn the iSnack 2.0 name. A website, “Names That Are Better Than iSnack 2.0”, sprang up. One commentator even suggested that person who had submitted the winning name be tarred with Vegemite and forced to run naked through Sydney “as retribution for his cultural crime.”

Within 72 hours, Kraft decided the i-Snack 2.0 name wasn’t worth defending. A subsequent poll chose Vegemite “CheesyBite” as the preferred name. However sales of iSnack 2.0 rose 47 percent during its controversial first two weeks, not affecting sales of original Vegemite. Marketing stunt or blunder? I guess the lines between genius and madness are blurred.

So, is social media friend or foe?  Does it even matter? In both cases, social channels were certainly used to attack brands. These channels don’t exist because marketers want them to. They exist because the mob wants them to. The real question, members of the jury, is what roles are you and your company playing in social media channels?

Who could have guessed, for example, that Facebook would fuel a seemingly boundless global fascination with growing virtual turnips?

One of the interesting trends developing on Twitter is the conversation that happens around popular TV shows and major broadcast events. This represents an interesting shift in the way people view TV. Traditionally considered ‘lean-back’ media, TV is meant to be something that we passively consume, sitting on our sofas, observing but uninvolved.

But something changed that; laptop computers became affordable and wireless internet connections became prevalent.  Now when we’re sitting on the sofa watching TV, we’re often online at the same time, idly surfing the web, emailing friends, watering our virtual turnips, or tweeting.

Next time you’re watching a TV show, try entering its title into Twitter’s search box and you’ll most likely see a wave of lively discussion taking place as people share their thoughts on what they’re seeing. On the surface this might not seem like a big deal, but I think it’s interesting for a couple of reasons.

It provides a clear illustration of what’s really at the heart of social media; people’s deep seated urge to share their experiences with others. We have an instinct for communication. Something as simple as watching a TV show suddenly becomes a lot more entertaining when you can exchange observations and jokes with other viewers while the show is being broadcast.

When a major event is being televised, such as a world cup game or the recent elections in the UK, Twitter is increasingly where we (and the press) look to gauge society’s reaction. It’s not just fun, it’s a whole new way of tapping into the collective consciousness around major events.

It also shows that all media is becoming social, whether it wants to or not. Something as mundane and familiar as watching a TV show takes on a fascinating new dimension simply by adding the ability for viewers to share their thoughts with each other. A friend recently confessed that after a few years of recording his favourite shows with a PVR to watch later at leisure, he’s got back into the habit of watching them as they air just so that he can read the live Twitter backchannel commentary. I doubt he’s alone in this.

It won’t be long before broadcasters take notice of this phenomenon (some already are, but only on a small scale) and I think we’ll see increasingly innovative new ways of integrating real-time viewer conversations and commentary with broadcast programming. Maybe this will be via Twitter, or maybe new platforms and technologies will flood into this area.

Just as social media democratised web content, the future of TV now lies with the viewers just as much as the broadcasters.