#headstream

[whatsgoingonovahere]

Anthony singing on TikTok Headstream live back in 2021.

If anyone has more clips of this please send them to me, these are the only ones I could find

Credit: @/_.hami1ton.fan._ (TikTok)

[shioriybradshaw]

(Headstream)

[moseltal]

A small #Bhuddism stone #statue and the creek (on the low right side of this image) close to the #headstream of #Kurome River in a western suburb called #Tama or #Musashino area of #Tokyo, #Japan. Totoro's forest might have the same atmosphere; actually Totoro's home area is within a 20-minute drive from this spot. #river #Totoro #黒目川 #源流

[duncanbell101]

Social Brands 100 is the leading benchmark for performance in social spaces, identifying the leading brands and providing a snapshot of social media’s evolution each year.  Rather than producing one broad ranking as we’ve done previously, this year we’ll be publishing a series of rankings throughout 2014 focusing on specific areas such as industry sector or target audience. Ranking 100 similar brands will provide more relevant insight and comparison against peers and competitors.  We’ve also been developing our set of Social KPIs, so as well as looking at engagement, we’ll be extending our KPIs across customer service and social reputation.  And so when measuring different sectors, we’ll be deploying a tailored methodology utilising the most relevant set of Social KPIs.  For an assessment of the top ranked brand, Battlefield, click here

For an assessment of the performance and priorities of travel brands, click here

However, for an interesting blog on the possible limitations of the Headstream methodology, click here

[theniwrotethis]

Right time. Right Place. Mobile and social integration in travel.

What’s the number 1 travel app in the world? Google Earth, says Rory Kenny,TripAdvisor’s Director of Mobile Partnerships, EMEA. With 22 million downloads globally, the travel website sits at a comfortable number 2 and Kenny shared some of his experiences delivering what he called ‘right time, right place’ content at an event in London recently.

43% of travel research is conducted using mobiles*

55% of European travellers use smartphones while abroad**

94% use mobiles to research local activities***

58% turn data roaming off**

TripAdvisor has found that mobile is primarily being used in two ways, for planning and predeparture, and ‘in destination’ for last minute booking and location guides. That last one is a challenge – if 58% of users switch off data roaming abroad, they are dependent on wifi access. One solution has been to create downloadable city guides that will also work offline.

Social integration has become a significant area of focus for the brand. Kenny pointed out that while 83% of all holiday shoppers are influenced by customer reviews^, ultimately we trust our friends’ reviews even more. Over 120 million people have used Facebook Connect to access TripAdvisor content and the company’s research has shown that people who connect socially are 27% more engaged. Evidence of this can be seen in the 1.5 billion pins that have been dropped on the app’s world map, which allows people to earn badges, share and rate (and brag about, of course) the destinations they’ve visited with their friends.

The app integrates into users’ timelines and posts activity, as one would expect. It also pushes relevant friend reviews to the top of search results. The most recent leaderboard from AppData ranks TripAdvisor fifth for monthly active users with 33,200,000.

Partnerships play another essential role for the brand. TripAdvisor’s mobile api feeds content to partner sites, enriching the experience of booking flights and train tickets with relevant content, while also encouraging more visitors.

Social will continue to play a major role in the future activities of TripAdvisor, and Kenny ended stating that the company is changing its whole DNA to plan for an even more mobile future. These approaches all play a significant role in delivering content in engaging, timely and appropriate ways to anyone on the hunt for travel advice.

If you’re keen for more, we’ve just published a whitepaper on the Travel sector.  It looks at how brands can maximise their returns on social and what’s coming up on the horizon. Let us know what you think.

*PhoCus Wright Traveler TechSurvey 2011

** TripAdvisor Travel Survey 2011

*** Our Mobile Planet

^ChannelAdvisor ‘Consumer Shopping Habits Survey’ Aug 2010

[theniwrotethis]

Can sponsored tweets win gold from fans?

Wayne Rooney, Jack Wilshire and Nike were reprimanded by the ASA recently for tweets from the footballers promoting Nike but passed off as a personal statement.  Rooney’s contentious tweet said:

My resolution – to start the year as a champion, and finish it as a champion… #makeitcount http://t.co/JD6HUzbJ

The link takes you straight through to Nike’s website. The brand has defended Rooney, claiming that his followers are essentially ‘opting in’ to marketing messages by choosing to follow him on Twitter. Really?

Meanwhile, in even cloudier territory, Toni & Guy landed in trouble when TOWIE star Gemma Collins tweeted about a promotion at the Lakeside salon, which could be claimed by stating her name.  The hair salon claimed no formal arrangement was in place. They say it was a spur of the moment idea that came about as a result of the team offering to waive the fee, Collins being happy with her haircut and a suggestion that she might tweet about it.  Hmmm. Tricky.  Or is it?

Irrespective of the defence these brands make for the behaviour of their endorsers, the fact remains that followers, fans and fellow pinners are there for a reason, because they think you have something interesting to share. If that interesting thing turns out to have an agenda behind it, the personal connection is eroded – probably weakening marketing messages in the future.

The good news is that there is a quite simple solution. The IAB Social Media Council (of which Headstream is a member) has recently published guidelines about paid promotions in social media, which include recommendations for legally appropriate behaviour on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums. All the above tweeters needed to do to comply with the guidelines is insert a simple #ad into the tweet to remain transparent about their activity. Using three simple characters, everyone knows you’re commercially involved with the brand and people can choose whether to follow the link or not.

With the marketing fireball that is the Olympics just a week or two away, it’ll be interesting to see how brands and sponsored athletes manage this new problem and more importantly, how consumers respond.

[theniwrotethis]

Social Brands 100 Q&A: Cadbury

1. What do you think makes yours a social brand?

We’re lucky enough to work with products which people genuinely love, and naturally talk about in their own social spaces. Right from the early days of Facebook, when Wispa lovers campaigned there for the bar’s return, we’ve been keen to engage with this natural conversations and provide fans with something in return for their support.

Being aware of the importance of these loyalists & advocates has ensured social media isn’t a silo or an afterthought, but a channel that’s considered throughout the marketing process throughout Kraft Foods. As well as continuing everyday conversations with our fans we’ve been able to give them unique experiences, such as the chance to be in our Spots v Stripes Race Season TV advert, or try out a new product before it hits the shelves.

2. Can you tell us a little about how social fits into your communications mix?

For us a great idea is one that works not just on TV or a poster but across a wide range of mediums – traditional media types remain crucial to our communications mix but digital & social channels are often where we can most engagingly bring an idea to life.

Through our social channels we’re able to cost effectively reach millions of consumers directly, not just with a new TV creative or poster, but with a way to be involved in it or tell the next chapter in the story. Our latest Wispa campaign for example will extoll the benefits of ‘Time well mis-spent’ through cinema and poster advertising, but on Facebook we’ll be bringing that to life by actively supporting & resourcing fans who come up with great ways to mis-spend their own time.

Social channels are also a key paid media opportunity, with significant reach, social context and an audience often quite ready to engage. Outside of Facebook we’ve seen phenomenal responses to the 5 Promoted Trends we’ve run on Twitter – giving consumers a gentle nudge and encouraging their natural willingness to talk with us do the rest.

3. What are you most proud of achieving in social media over the last year?

As sponsors of the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games we’ve focused on giving people up and down the country the chance to experience some aspect of the Games first hand. Cadbury Dairy Milk’s Keep Team GB Pumped campaign aimed not only to give people a glimpse of the hard work Team GB athletes put into training behind the scenes, but also to give them a way of actively supporting & encouraging them.

We rerecorded six 80s power anthems by letting the public record their own vocals for the track on YouTube and mixing the end results together. The first track aired as a TV advert, and the others as part of our sponsorship of Glee, but we also heavily promoted them across social platforms. The process allowed us to take our fans both virtually & physically behind the scenes and also to directly connect with the athletes & ask them questions.

We’re also proud of our first Google+ Hangout was with Shanaze Reade, the BMX World Champion and star of our ‘Gold’ video. We’re hugely proud of our success on Google+, growing steadily from nothing to over 1.2 million followers in 6 months. We’ve shown that it definitely is possible to get strong engagement on the platform, if you’re able to provide varied, interesting & relevant content.  We’ve run half a dozen Hangouts with our fans now which is a new way of personally communicating not possible through any other channel. Outside of the direct engagement we’ve seen quantifiable increases in our search rankings (driving a 7.5% increase in organic traffic to our site) and a 17% increase in click through rate simply by adding the G+ social context to our AdWord campaigns.

4. What’s changed for you over the last year in social media?

I think there’s been an accelerated shift in where and when people access social media – as both smartphone numbers & the level of social integration on them soar it’s truly becoming something people expect to be able to casually dip in and out of. It’s most visible when you see social apps, which don’t work on mobiles and the level of frustrated comments that inevitably follows – the user journey is completely broken for a consumer who expects to be able to engage on their own terms.

When developing social apps today we try to make ‘will it work on mobile?’ one of our first questions and where resources are limited we’ve even started to prioritise this over widespread backwards browser compatibility. If any of our Kraft Foods brands begins to assess a mobile strategy, I tell them that if they have an active social profile they’re mobile already.

5. What do you see changing over the next 12 months?

From a marketing perspective an ever-growing awareness that social isn’t just a check box, or a free way of getting extra reach, but an opportunity to do something incredibly creative together with your consumers. New technology such as Hangouts or platforms such as Instagram & Pinterest open up huge creative frontiers (and opportunities to bring ideas to life) so the challenge for us is working out exactly where to place finite resource.

With the understanding of what social is good for comes a better sense of where it doesn’t work so well – for instance, even with millions of followers cutting through at scale requires well planned media spend. Certainly social networks can work to virally amplify that investment but an over reliance on that effect is why some great social ideas never get the exposure they deserve.

Consumers are likely to continue to become increasingly platform or situation agnostic and to expect to be able to continue experiences from their desktops to their phones & tablets. Similarly the distinction between websites and social channels will continue to blur with more expectation for the latter to deliver traditional information and customer services. Even on social media networks themselves people are embracing multiple niche services to get the experience they want. For the forseeable future though, they’re most likely to continue to tie those profiles back into established services such as Facebook so that it remains manageable for them.

6. Any last thoughts?

It’s an honour to be nominated and short listed for the Social Brands 100 and ultimately we have our fans to thank for being up for talking with us and letting us into their personal spaces each day.

[theniwrotethis]

Social Brands 100 Q&A: Tetley

Drinking tea may be a fundamentally social activity, but how to replicate that experience in social spaces? For Tetley, the world’s second largest manufacturer and distributor of tea, it meant bringing back the animated characters that are the Tetley Tea Folk after a 10-year break to provide a human and emotional connection to the brand.

1.     What do you think makes yours a social brand?

Sociability is an inherent quality of our product – people coming together over a cup of tea. We saw social media as an extension of that quality and use it as an extension of the values of our brand across multiple platforms. It breaks down the barriers between the brand and the consumer and creates an emotional connect with them.

2.     Can you tell us a little about how social fits into your communications mix?

We wanted to use social as a new way of reaching our audiences in a category that’s got little differentiation and is very promotionally driven. So we made it a key channel in the mix of TV, media partnerships, print and digital. It’s our opportunity to communicate daily with our consumers and very valuable.

Through research, we realised that people, in general, talk to characters more naturally in social spaces than they do brands. So after a 10-year hiatus, we found a new purpose for Tetley’s Tea Folk characters – as social media hosts. With their built-in brand equity, they were actually a softer and warmer channel of communication, yet a new voice that consumers wouldn’t mind sitting down with.

It had been 10 years since the Tetley Tea Folk were in the public eye. Consumers felt they were old fashioned but these cheeky characters had other ideas. Their leader, Gaffer, became the active spokesperson most ardent supporter for a better tea break.

The Tetley Tea Folk social personas took hold, prominent on Facebook, posting on YouTubewhile Gaffer tweeted about all of it. The content we created was aimed to invite young women to sit down and have a cuppa with Gaffer and the Tea Folk, digitally speaking anyway.

Followers and fans shared their favourite tea break stories. There were giveaways and games. We invited British music, sports and comedy celebri-teas to join the conversation. The Tea Folk are not only timely and fun, but make tea breaks better.

We also support our company CSR initiative through Facebook with the ‘Tetley Farmers First Hand’ page, allowing customers to talk directly to the farmers who pick our tea. Although for a completely different purpose, the engagement levels are up to 8 times the Facebook average and legitimise this as a communications choice for CSR.

3.     What are you most proud of achieving in social media over the last year?

Our customers are used to supermarket loyalty cards and receiving rewards for participation. We used this as inspiration to develop the Tetley Loyal-Tea Club and to motivate users, we made it into a game.

The rewards were digital (facebook badges) and real (product and merchandise). Participants were rewarded with points in four ways: by inviting their friends to join the Page, when their friends converted to fans, by sharing content, and by entering a daily prize quiz.

On launch, we had no idea how the public was going to react to the initiative. It was great when we reached our 6-month KPI in seven days and sustained engagement levels well above the Facebook average.

 4.     What’s changed for you over the last year in social media?

There are many, many more brands in social media now, including our competitors. We have to continually come up with new and different ways to engage our users. The business challenge is monitoring and ROI. We’re doing a lot of work to define the value of these communications and the ROI to the business as we grow and develop.

 5.     What do you see changing over the next 12 months?

ROI is still key. There are many ways of monitoring engagement, buzz, purchase intent etc, but none are universally followed. As social media develops, we need to be able to measure the impact of the investment on the brand and business.

With regards to strategy, we will continue to develop our social media strategy in line with the wider business. We want to look at linking Facebook activity to purchase (both directly and indirectly) and how social media can facilitate real life connections of people coming together for a cuppa.

 6.     Any last thoughts?

After all this, it’s time for a tea break.