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The Nelson Bostock Group celebrates the year.

Last Thursday, The Nelson Bostock Group descended upon Vinopolis for a wine tasting extravaganza to celebrate some of the best work we’ve done over the past year.

Along with sister agencies Fever PR and Nelson Bostock Communications, we spent the rainy afternoon all toasty and warm indoors, treating our taste buds to a delightful array while the lovely staff at Vinopolis talked us through how you’re actually supposed to taste wine. Not as

Blair is demonstrating in the picture below!

After we had our fill of wine, it was time for The Bostocks – our annual company awards show. Coveted prizes included bottles of Bollinger, certificates signed by our CEO (not photocopied, actually signed), and vouchers for the teams to spend at local eateries and bars.

It was safe to say we were on the edge of our seats hoping that we could get our paws on some of these goodies. And did we win? Yes indeed, we did! We won the Best Social Consumer Campaign for our work for Toshiba for the Dark Knight Rises and won Highly Commended for our work for 505 games for Sniper Elite V2.

Additionally, we also had two of our very own Thingy Wingys nominated for the Party Animal of the Year Award (this is obviously the achievement we are most proud of).When the awards ended we sat down for a lovely meal and failed terribly when trying to use our newly found wine knowledge, to order vino. After that we all trotted on home with full bellies and our prizes safely stored in our bags. Except for the certificate. Unfortunately that got folded over a thousand times and now resembles an ancient manuscript.

Martin Bostock Appointed Chairman of PRCA PR Council

We’re delighted to announce that our Chairman and founder, Martin Bostock, has been appointed Chairman of the PRCA PR Council for 2012-2013. Previously, Martin was Vice-Chairman of the council and he played a key role in the creation and launch of the PRCA’s Partnership Charter, a best practice guide to successful commercial relationships between clients and PR consultancies. He succeeds Liquid CEO, Elisabeth Lewis-Jones.

Martin Bostock said: “I’m extremely pleased to have the chance to build on the excellent projects instigated by Lis Lewis-Jones this year. There has never been a more exciting and challenging time for our industry and I hope to help the PR Council make an even greater contribution to the issues and debates that really matter.”

Martin co-founded Nelson Bostock with Roger Nelson and remains at the helm of the organisation which celebrates its 25th Anniversary this year.

Facial recognition - Bridging the online world with reality

Facial recognition software is being used by more and more brands to engage with their audiences. One of the latest from redpepper, features a facecam on the outside of a bar, restaurant or any place of interest that ‘sees’ you as you enter and automatically checks you in to Facebook. Not so great for those wanting to remain aloof, but fantastic for those who want to be seen to be everywhere. Through automatically checking in, if that place is running a deal, it is then sent directly to your phone for you to redeem.

This is a great combination between the real world and the online social world, with facial recognition providing the bridge between.

Coca Cola Israel used facial recognition software to seamlessly integrate a real-life experiential event with Facebook. This is a step up from the previous year's activity at the Coca Cola village, where participants activity was synced live with their friends on Facebook through the use of wristbands, which held each participant’s log in details. Statuses were updated automatically in realtime and all photos taken were automatically tagged.

This year the process was made more seamless by removing the wristbands. Facial recognition software – FaceLook (an app based on Face.com) identifies the user and automatically posts a check-in within a status update, which relates to the activity closest to them. The machines also allowed the participants to manually create status updates and post photos and comments using only their faces as identification.

Campaigns from Jello and Plan.UK use the technology for a slightly different purpose – less for integration and more for targeting – The Jello campaign used it to judge if you are old enough to sample their product (that’s just for adults). If the person was too young they were shown this message “Child detected! Sorry kid, you’re too young to appreciate indulgence like this, please step away so the grownups can get their free treat’. The Plan.UK campaign used it, so their advert was only shown to a female audience.

In terms of marketing, the benefits of the technology are clear to see. For the first two campaigns, it works as the perfect catalyst to boost sharing. For the latter campaigns, it reduces the number of eyes that see your advert, but ensures those eyes that do, are the ones you want to see it.

We’re really excited to see how more brands will integrate facial recognition in future campaigns and we’ll definitely be watching this space.

Image sourced from http://truthfall.com/

The Paralympics Opening Ceremony - How Twitter Reacted

The Olympics are over, but fear not, for the Paralympics have begun – hurrah!

Last night the Olympic stadium opened its doors once more to those lucky enough to have a ticket. This time, coverage is coming from Channel 4. This means we have been treated to cracking adverts from C4 leading up to the Paralympics about the superhuman athletes, but it also means we were shown adverts about FMCG’s during the coverage of the Olympic ceremony!

We followed Twitter during the ceremony and have taken a look at some stats to see what people were chatting about.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of conversation took place on Twitter yesterday, with a whopping 490,992 mentions.

We analysed this conversation on Twitter to see which words had been mentioned the most:

Queen

Similarly to the opening ceremony, the queen made an entrance, quite how much of an entrance, was debatable… Her presence and entrance was highly commented upon and she appears to be the subject most tweeted about

Prince Harry

The words Harry and Prince also feature prominently, however, he unsurprisingly did not make an entrance! His lack of appearance was the main focus for tweets about the Prince

Stephen Hawking

His appearance at the beginning of the ceremony generated a lot of conversation and focussed on his key messages. The most tweeted phrases are below:

“Remember to look up at the stars, not down at your feet”

“The Paralympics are about transforming our perception of the world. Creativity can take many forms”

“Be curious”

bbc and C4

With the Olympics shown on the BBC and now the Paralympics being shown on Channel 4, there were lots of mentions comparing each channel’s coverage. A lot of tweets were praising the BBC for a better quality of service

Adverts

Leading on from the point above, the main grumble about the coverage on Channel 4 was the presence of averts that punctuated the ceremony. Even though their appearance was apparently stopped half way through (due to the overrunning of the ceremony), there was still a large number of tweets that expressed outrage and disappointment at their presence

Amazing, Great and Love

There was also a lot of praise being tweeted about the ceremony. The main factors receiving praise were Stephen Hawking, Orbital, the athletes themselves and the creativity of the ceremony’s design

Luck and Athletes

The words Luck and Athletes also appear prominently as a huge amount of tweets focussed on solely wishing the athletes luck for the upcoming games

Here at TWW, regardless of adverts and the lengthy overrun, we’re smitten with the Paralympics. Stephen Hawking told us to ‘be curious’… We’re curious as to what we’ll do when it’s all over!

Harry's analytics laid bare

People are voyeurs. Always have been; always will be. In a sense we like witnessing what’s going on, what’s hot and what’s already exposed. So it's no surprise that over the last few days Prince Harry has seen a lot of attention. The released nude photos have sparked a lot of debate online – over 162,600 mentions being viewed 423 million times, most of which taking place on Twitter.

So, how have we reacted to the news (and the photos) and which words have been used most in comments? We analysed conversation on Twitter, Blogs, News and Forums to find out more:

The key debate appears to be whether Prince Harry has got the right to enjoy himself as he desires or whether, considering his status, he should not expose himself to the world!

While some see nothing wrong with Prince Harry enjoying himself (naked or not),

Others are clearly 'offended'!

Is the Prince's behaviour right or wrong? – Tell us what you think!

Too much gamification?

The world is becoming evermore digital. This is not only bringing about new opportunities for smaller indie game developers, but also increasing the places we can actually play. Exhibit Bar in Balham has installed a pee-controllled computer game. Not only are we glad this eradicates lots of grubby fingers all over the same touch screen, but it got us thinking - could this be the start of the future, which could be THIS:

Sight from Sight Systems on Vimeo.

The Missing Links - Hunt for the hidden tickets

There's no disputing it - Batman has come a long way since 'bang', 'boom' and 'kapow'! In the latest and last chapter of the Dark Knight Trilogy, we'll see Gotham in what's expected to be, a shade of dark like no other.

To celebrate, we helped Toshiba UK hide 5 pairs of tickets to the London premiere and a advanced screening across the vast expanse of the internet. We didn't make it easy. We challenged fans to solve clues that lead them on a trail across websites who partnered with the campaign, these included: Den of Geek, HeyUGuys and Average Joes Blog. Challenges ranged from decoding morse code to a binary string. We said we didn't make it easy!

Housed on Facebook, Toshiba have seen a 100% increase in new likes as they community has doubled in size within the space of 2 weeks. That was phase 1... now phase 2 has just been launched. Toshiba UK are flying one lucky pair to Los Angeles - the mecca of cinema, for a deluxe VIP Warner Bros. studio tour, offering exclusive access into the world of movie making. To find out more about our latest campaign click here

#Social media #batman #toshiba #campaign #tdkr #the dark knight rises

Facebook - Timeline goes live for brand pages

The day is here, timeline goes live for brand pages on Facebook. Already there have been some great examples of how brands are using this, namely Manchester United, Dove and Burberry.

Fans will be able to easily navigate all 134 years of Manchester United’s history through the timeline. Manchester United’s Facebook Page publishes in 18 languages and is liked by over 22.7 million fans worldwide. Over 300 pieces of new content have been added to the Page in anticipation of today’s launch including this video of key milestones.

Burberry has built a close immersive relationship with its Facebook community around the world since launching the Page in 2009, regularly sharing rich brand multimedia content with over 10.9 million fans. The timeline on its Facebook Page now includes milestones from the brand's foundation in 1856, through to its celebration of 150 years in 2006 as well as the introduction of live streams of their shows from September 2010.

Looking at the highlights from Dove’s new Facebook Page you can see that Dove was founded in 1957, ran its Campaign for Real Beauty featuring real women in 2004, launched the Dove Self Esteem Fund in 2006 and now has over 5.9 million fans on Facebook.

Brands will be able to create milestones, add custom cover art, message users as the page and highlight key content. Of course, do bear in mind the Facebook cover art guidelines for pages, which can be found here.

This week’s “Thingywingys” - Friday 17th February

After last week's hiatus, here's this week's Thingywingy

The 'How people see me/what people think I do' meme may not have the catchiest title, but we all know, it's whats inside that counts and the insides of this meme, are bloody brilliant!

Poking fun at how the world sees you and the actual reality of your job, whether you're a contemporary artist, web developer or a doctor there's a meme for that. In fact, just about every profession has been covered. The Huffington Post has very kindly grouped some of the best ones together, so we just had to share.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/16/what-people-think-i-do-meme_n_1281144.html#s700946&title=Journalist

#meme #social media manager #what people think I do

This week’s “Thingywingys” - Friday 3rd February

Have you ever wanted to hear that silly catchy song you love to hate for 50 hours in a row? Well, you might be in for a treat as it is one of our favourite memes from this week’s “Thingywingys”

1 – 50 Hours of meme?

Who would’ve thought that the logical development for a meme about an odd-looking man singing Trolololo or He-Man singing was to fill YouTube with 10 and 50 hour versions of them?

That version of the infamous TROLOLO song lasts 10 hours and has been seen more than 4 million times.

And yes, there’s a 50 hour version that has been seen nearly half a million times.

Our favourite in the office

We really couldn’t tell why was this started, but it is incredible to think that out of any meme, there’s a 10, 50 or even 100 hours version of it in YouTube with hundreds of thousands of views.

Do you remember Nyan Cat? The crazy-weird video of a cat flying projecting a rainbow with more than 62 million views?

Well, here it is the 100 hours version (with nearly 4 million views)

2 – The 46 types of people on Facebook

We’ve all seen lists categorizing how people behave on Facebook. From the person that likes everything to the person that doesn’t understand the difference between the wall and the private messages.

You might think: “No need for another list then”

Well, you’re wrong.

The guys from www.buzzfeed.com have put together the funniest examples to date (slightly NSFW)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/types-of-people-on-facebook

3 – It’s official, the 80s were better… at EVERYTHING

Maybe the world was a nicer place then, where naïve people could happily mingle with the rest of us. Or maybe everyone was doing drugs. Either way, thanks to the magic powers of YouTube we have access to this piece of 80s memorabilia. Everything about this video is equally perfect and wrong at the same time

Source: www.buzzfeed.com

#trololo #youtube #50hours #10hours #nyancat #he-man #facebook #80s #karate

This week’s “Thingywingys” - Friday 27th January

Similar to the definition the Urban Dictionary gives; a “Thingywingy” for us is one of those bits of the Internet that you just have to share. It might be a new meme, an incredible video or an unbelievable news article that’s made it around the world.

So for the first time, here are this week’s “Thingywingys”.

You’re welcome.

1 – The Internet LOVES Tina Fey (who doesn’t?)

When Tina Fey photobombed Amy Poehler during the Golden Globes, the Internet went wild seeing one of its favourite celebrities being part of a meme that consists of people ruining each other’s photos.

(Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/tina-feys-golden-globes-p_n_1216818.html)

This week the internet has united Tina with another famous meme – Shit Girls Say – by making this great compilation of – Shit Liz Lemon Says

You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btjWF2VU62E

Unfortunately embedding has been disabled :(

2 – NASA has just published a 8000 x 8000 pixels photo of the Earth. Yes. Three zeroes behind those eights. (via Buzzfeed.com)

You can find the original 8000 x 8000 here

(Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/6760135001/in/photostream)

3 – The time-sucking device that is the Cheezburger network has just posted this insightful look into the difference between the life of a dog and the life of a cat.

It is one of the most shared LOL Catz this week.

(Source: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2012/01/26/funny-pictures-dogs-life-vs-cats-life/)

#meme #Tina Fey #LOL Catz #NASA #Thingywingys #photobombing

Oh Hello Tumblr, didn't see you there!

On Friday 9th September 2011 Tumblr catapulted itself to a major milestone – its 10 billionth post. Impressive, yes - but when you consider that it was only rolling past 5 billion posts in May, to double its growth in just 4 months, is incredible!

Although Tumblr and Twitter broke out into the social media scene at around the same time – Tumblr suffered a monstrous amount of down time and so hasn’t grown at the same rate as its feathery competitor.

Roll forwards to the present day however and the distance between them is much less vast. Tumblr is now adding more than 40 million posts a day and according to Quantcast, is attracting 72 millions visitors a month.

What really demands attention though, is the number of page views Tumblr is racking up… More than Wikipedia and also more than its feathery competitor (well kind of)! According to ComScore, Twitter generates 3.4 billions page views and Tumblr generates 6.5 billion a month. Although we have to remember, many Tweets are viewed via an app, meaning these stats are not exactly like for like.

So, where’s this momentum come from?

It’s good to share and the world knows this - every gadget and every piece of social media allows you to share, be it your location, your opinion, the photo of your friend falling down drunk at a party or one of coolest pieces of design you’ve ever encountered. Tumblr neatly fills the gap between short and sweet twitter and a full-blown blog - and as the pace of life continues to quicken, Tumblr allows you to share anything, as easily and as quickly as possible.

“Tumblr is a re-envisioning of tumblelogging, a subset of blogging that uses quick, mixed-media posts. The service hopes to do for the tumblelog what services like LiveJournal and Blogger did for the blog.”

(http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tumblr)

Tumblr allows you to share: text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos from your browser, phone, desktop and email. Posts can also be liked, you can follow other Tumblrs and you can completely customise the design and domain of your Tumblr profile - You own the copyright to your own work too. The key point of difference though, is this blogging platform allows you to reblog – much like the beloved retweet.

Historically, Tumblr has been associated with a younger demographic, however Quantcast has just presented findings that 44% of Tumblr’s US users are actually over 35. Interestingly the male/female split is surprisingly even as well - 51/49 % respectively. (http://www.quantcast.com/tumblr.com)

With $85 million of funding in the post to Mr Tumble from the likes of Richard Branson, Greylock and Sequoia Capital, and with a current valuation of $800 million, we’re really excited to see where Tumblr will be in 12 months time.

#blog #tumblr #social #media #social media #tools #digital

Social media around the world 2011