Neoco collaborated with Live Union to put on ‘8×8 London’ last night. A ilovedesign.com LIVE event for our client Quark. The event had great feedback with a bunch of good tweets and blog posts. Thanks to all the speakers. They all put on great talks around what inspires them. A few of my favs were John Bateson’s (Bateson Studio) matching tie and wedding dress (!), Richard Hooker (W+K) and Jamie Wieck (Airside).

Video content from the event will be on ilovedesign.com within the next few days for all registered users to view. Everyone at Neoco is looking forward to the next ilovedesign.com LIVE event.

Neil just noticed that everyone in our office has a four letter name or nickname:

Benn
Mark
Neil
Alex
Elly
Jody
Coxy
Atko
Ross
Carl

Odd fact.

That is all people – back to work

"the Park & Ride shoppers definitely looked different this year"

Because the Wii girlfriend was just to subtle, Alton Towers and Ultimo combined for this viral.

“Alton Towers Resort teamed up with Britains leading underwear brand, Ultimo to make sure women don’t make a boob on the rides this summer.

A group of test-riders donned a variety of Ultimo bras and were put through their paces on several rides, including Rita Queen of Speed and Spinball Whizzer, to test the durability and lift support of bras-and to make sure they were a snug fit.”

Whilst it’s an obvious viral choice for the guys, it just feels a little a little wide of the mark for the core audiences of Alton Towers and Ultimo. Yes, it will no doubt get a lot of viewers and maybe even some press but are they right viewers? Will it be the right press? We constantly work with clients to educate them about the difference between quantity and quality when it comes ot social media and this is a good example of quantity at the expense of quality. It’s much better to have lower exposure but to a more targetted audience. Neoco have delivered loads of word of mouth, viral and social media campaigns and consistently, when you look at the ROI, 1,000 qualitive targeted users are better than 50,000 quantitive broad-base users. Don’t fall for the trap of thinking high viewers/ fans/ friends = success.

"you got more chance of getting in Wimbledon, son"

Our summer event for I Love Design with Quark and Design Week has already sold out – 3 weeks before the event! That’s how we roll at Neoco – if we’re behind the scenes it’s going to get traction!

With a fabulous line up and some great social media coverage the event looks to be something very special.

We’ll be posting lots of content here during and after the event from some of the most inspirational speakers around.

Pats on back to:

Quark XPress

Design Week

Live Union

habitat look to Iran to help boost sales!

Furniture retailer Habitat has come under fire after it spammed Twitter users through the use of hash tags.

The retailer had been using hash tags, which help users track conversations on the microblogging site, to promote marketing messages that had no relevance to the topics used.

The company’s Twitter feed, HabitatUK, was putting out marketing messages such as ‘Our totally desirable Spring collection now has 20% off!’ on Friday, using tags such as #mms, #Apple, #iPhone and even used an Iranian election hashtag #Mousavi.

The brand pulled all the messages the next day and replaced them with standard marketing and sales tweets, but many members of Twitter had already seen the messages and publicly spoke of their annoyance.

A spokeswoman at Habitat said, “This was a mistake which we’re looking into. What’s important to us is that we always listen, take on board observations and welcome constructive criticism. We will do our utmost to ensure any mistakes are never repeated.”

Rhys Willians, managing partner at Agenda21, said it was another example of a big brand poorly executing a social media idea.

“In its response it has also gone for corporate behaviour, which doesn’t really work,” he said. “It made a mistake. There’s a general acceptance from Twitter users that it won’t operate for free and that there are going to be ads, but brands need to know what they’re doing and execute it correctly.”

Antony Mayfield, head of social media at digital agency iCrossing, said brands need to understand social networks before using them for marketing.

“You need to understand your networks and Habitat understood on a technical level but not on a social level,” he said. “Brands also have to understand that just because it happened on a social network doesn’t mean people outside it won’t know about it too.”

This has just been picked up by the news sites and featured on NMA,

The piggy bank's probably not going to cover this one

Now, I’m sure many people have many views on this, but I’m still in shock about the amount that this poor woman was fined I’m under the impression that 29 songs is about 3 albums, which I’d say is about 20 quid? I’m pretty sure these songs wern’t on special.

Now, I’m not sure if you find this as funny as I do, but the best it is that she was originally fined $250,000 but it was a mistrail and obviously the music industry found some better lawyers.

It makes you wonder though, how exactly do they expect her to pay? If she’s got a good voice maybe they should take her on tour as some kind of “anti piracy extreme tour” it could definitely make a dent in fine!

Makes you appreciate Spotify that little bit more.
Thanks NME

A search for #iranelection right now will give you a pretty long list of results, in fact in the time I wrote this about 2000 new tweets have appeared. Twitter seems to be the only way that Iranians can communicate at the moment as the government clamps down on most forms of communication.

Twitter is so important there right now that Biz Stone announced that they are moving the planned maintenance to tomorrow to allow citizens in Iran to communicate with one another. It’s a pretty big step from the social networking site, and also follows on from the #cnnfail hash tag, criticising the broadcasters lack of coverage of the elections.

It’s all pretty exciting stuff and following on from our last post, highlights the power of social networking sites can have in the real world.

Now, for those of you working in London, no doubt you will have had a nightmare getting to work for the last 2 days, but one cheeky chappy, with a passion for tweeting, decided to bring some cheer into people’s journeys by offering a ride on the back of his motorbike.

Another satisfied tweeter!

But Paul’s real motivation behind it was to get people thinking. What he has done is show how social media can react in a very short space of time to real word events and how social networking tools aren’t just about small bits of information that are bound to remain digital. Tiny tweets can make real things happen! If you want more info on how Neoco can help your brand react to whatever you may be facing, please get in touch with Neoco!

Read the whole article here
Follow paul @Paul_Clarke

In the stampede to embrace all things social we have to understand that in the same way it enables people to expose more of their life to their friends, people are exposing more of their lives to strangers.

Meet the Smiths.

This is a photo they took for their family Christmas message that was sent out to friends via Christmas cards and a blog message.

Now look at this advert for a local grocery in Prague, Czech Republic.

It seems someone Googled something like ‘happy family’ , saw the Smiths and thought it made a great image.

Fortunately for the Smiths, they have a well-traveled assortment of friends, one of whom saw them in Prague and let them know. You can read the rest pf the story on the BBC site but the question here is one about permission. Increasingly, ‘copyright’ as a subject is being assaulted by the ‘democratisation’ of the web. Whilst many of us sit home and steal music, video and game entertainment at the expense of the large (and sometimes very small) corporates, suddenly we feel very unhappy when the shoe is on the other foot.*

Here’s a thought, instead of suing everyone, the corporations who are victims of piracy should download photos of the pirates and then use them for free in their advertising. 

*my legal disclaimer: I’m not implying the Smiths illegally download any content.

make 2009 a very merry Xmas

Online has demonstrated non-stop growth every Christmas in the retail sector and never has this been more important than in the current economic climate. Luckily for you, it can be even more cost effective…

We’ve teamed up with SheerLuxe to offer our clients a massive discount of the full day conference… and now we’ve managed to negotiate coverage for all followers of Neoco. The full agenda is below, including how to get your discount but the important thing to remember is that if you are planning on any selling this Christmas, this is a must-attend event. Neoco will be down there too to help out with any additional questions you may have.

A highly esteemed array of industry experts are presenting, including:
• Nick Robertson – founder of ASOS
• Nick Wheeler – founder of Charles Tyrwhitt & other half of The White Company founder Chrissie Rucker
• Emilie Carson – More2 & the founders of Isabella Oliver Vanessa Knox-Brien & Baukjen de Swaan Arons
• Vicky Lovell – Head of Operations at Astley Clarke, previously x7 yrs at John Lewis Direct
• Paul Sheehy – Chillifish & Peter Levenspiel – Chillifish & Ex Net-A-Porter e-commerce manager
• Andrew Wilson – The Catalogue Consultancy

Topics to be covered include planning your Christmas Strategy / Budget / Timings, your Christmas PPC campaign, viral marketing to grow your database cost effectively whilst driving sales, Christmas online merchandising, PR & standing out from the crowd, as well as the invaluable opportunity to network with likeminded businesses in your sector.

Wednesday 8th July, 2009 9am – 5pm Fulham, London SW6

9.30 – 10.10 Ecommerce Lessons from an Entrepreneur
Nick Wheeler (founder of Charles Tyrwhitt)

10.10 – 10.50 Your Christmas PPC Campaign
Piri Ramazanoglu (founder of MinuteSteak)
- When to start
- Allocating your PPC budget
- Finding the right key words in this competitive period
- Writing the right copy
- Bidding on Christmas competitors

10.50 – 11.20 COFFEE

11.20 – 12.05 Strategy / Timings / Budget this Christmas
Anne Stagg(more2)
- When to start planning your Christmas activity
- How to allocate your budget between existing and prospective clients
- Incentives and choices beyond discounting
- Co promotions and joint marketing
- Can you recruit through a sale?

12.05 – 12.45 Viral Marketing to Grow Your Database
Paul Sheehy (Chillifish) & Peter Levenspiel (Chillifish & Ex Net-A-Porter e-commerce manager)
- What is Viral Marketing and why does it work?
- Looking at ways to grow your database in the run up to Christmas to ensure you are communicating to a larger audience during this crucial trading time.
- Pssst, pass it on: a look at successful viral campaigns

12.45 – 13.45 LUNCH

13.45 – 14.35 Online Merchandising
Andrew Wilson (The Catalogue Consultancy)

In this fast paced session Andrew will cover how you can get the most of your merchandising this Christmas to increase your sales and profits with no extra expenditure.
- “Long Tail” or “Paradox of Choice” which applies to your range?
- How to use analytics to inform your merchandising
- Creating the correct price hierarchy for your site
- Getting the correct relationship between navigation and merchandising
- The small changes that can make a huge difference to your profits

14.35 – 15.15 PR, Marketing, Standing Out From the Crowd
Emilie Carson (more2) & Founders of Isabella Oliver
- Recognition: Who are your target markets & how to find them
- Repetition: Getting maximum impact from your campaigns / creative approaches to pr and media
- Reputation: How to influence what people think of your brand / tips to bringing your brand to life
- Recommendation: How to encourage customers to become brand advocates

15.15 – 15.45 COFFEE

15.45 – 16.25 Planning & Executing Successful Christmas Trading:
The rules are the same whether you are large or small
Vicky Lovell (Astley Clarke, Ops Director & previously John Lewis Direct, Head of Customer Service)
- Stock, Delivery, Customer Communications: What should you be thinking about – now
- Which strategy best fits your business?
- A unified approach
- Pulling it off!

16.25 – 17.00 Q&A Session
Nick Robertson (founder of ASOS)

17.00 – 19.00 DRINKS @ Chateau 6

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Interested in your discounted entry:

Simply email georgiecoleridgecole@sheerluxe.com quoting NEOCO to book at the early bird rate ( only £155 for independents).

Don’t say we never give you anything!

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