The apps enable you to set reminders for every special occasion on your iPhone and within Facebook ensuring you never forget a friend’s birthday, anniversary or wedding again. The iPhone app will remind you to call, text or post a message to your friend’s wall whilst the Facebook app will send you an email on the day of the occasion reminding you to post a message on your friend’s wall. If you do not have an iPhone you can still use the Facebook app completely separately.

The apps are a doddle to use, allowing you to add individual occasions yourself or import all your Facebook friends’ birthdays and post to their Facebook wall through the app.  You will also receive reminders of special occasions like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

It’s so easy to set up and use. Never miss an occasion again!

• Sync with Facebook and import all your Facebook friends. Syncing automatically updates too, so you can be sure that any new friends you add on Facebook in the future will automatically be added to your occasions list.

• Create a range of special occasions (Anniversary, Christening, Wedding) – there’s even an ‘Other’ category that you can use to remember important dates like your best friend’s driving test or Uncle Jim’s 60th birthday party.

•You can also add notes relating to every occasion – to remind yourself of a great gift idea, the date and venue of the party, or anything you like!

• Specify whether you want to receive reminders for all your occasions or just the ones you specify.

• Choose if you want to be reminded the same day, or up to 5 days in advance (to allow time to buy a personalised card from Card Town!). You can even specify the time of day your reminders will arrive.

• When you receive a reminder, you can choose to call or text your friend (if their number’s in your address book), or post a greeting on their Facebook wall.

We hope you’ll love using the app as much as we do. Don’t forget to leave a rating for us in the iPhone app store, we’d love your feedback.

To find out more visit the dedicated page about the Card Town Occasions apps.

To one degree or another, most of us have played a part in a viral campaigns success – we’ve all forwarded or posted a YouTube clip of the ‘man your man could smell like’ and (possibly unwittingly) become advocates for an after shave our Dad’s used to wear (sorry Dad, your secret’s out!).

Invariably agencies and brands now see viral as an additional channel to the conventional communications mix. Something that has the potential to be seen by millions, without the media budget of a prime-time TV campaign. Of course, the very nature of viral campaigns leaves success difficult to plan and quantify. If it were that simple, everyone would be doing it! The key, as with all campaigns, is a great idea.

Recently though, we’ve noticed an upsurge in ‘shock tactics’ by advertisers which (given the right placement and considered PR) can invariably give a campaign the necessary nudge it needs to go viral and make an impact with consumers.

Paddy Power – a master class in courting controversy

A prime example of this is Paddy Power’s recent online video as part of their ‘We Hear You’ campaign. Launched only days after the announcement of Roy Hodgson as England Manager (complete with ‘Uncle Roy’ reference), the ad features a few eyebrow raising references to England players off-field reputation, and potential solutions. The Drum soon reported that the ad (within weeks of launching) was restricted to over 18’s viewing by YouTube.

Paddy Power are no strangers to this strategy, having been the subject of a ban on their recent ‘transgender’ Cheltenham festival ad, and receiving over 1,000 complaints for a previous ad satirising blind football.

The hidden benefits of so-called ‘bad press’

The cynical marketers amongst us will on the one hand applaud such tactics. After all, the press coverage of the resulting ban alone will have got the brand some serious column inches, and history teaches us that controversial ads can often be the most recalled (United Colours of Benetton were masters of it during the 90s). But then was that the brief in the first place?

Of course, only Paddy Power and their respective creative partners will know the truth and (to their credit) they seemed to approach any concerns over the Cheltenham ad’s risqué nature with due consideration during planning, consulting a leading transgender group about the script prior to launch. Though it should come as no surprise to even the most liberal of us that the ad has resulted in such controversy.

It does raise the question of whether creating an ad to shock and push the boundaries of conventional good taste is the key to brands looking for that holy grail of organic Facebook shares and Twitter trends. It is invariably the more shocking ads that tend to pick up the social buzz, and benefit from the extra coverage they receive as a result of their (some would say) brave strategy.

Whether or not the strategy fits with a brand’s personality and ethics is a much broader question, and probably one for another day, but I’m sure many marketers would hardly bat an eyelid at the 1,000 complaints their blind football ad received, when they consider that very ad has been viewed almost 500,000 times on YouTube. After all, you just can’t buy that type of publicity…. or can you?

On May 26th the amended 2003 Regulations bring new legal obligations to website owners that could result in a devastating fine of £500,000 if they are found to be non-compliant.

At LHM we’ve  been busy researching, testing, auditing and implementing to ensure that our clients are prepared and ready for the deadline later this month.

By undertaking an audit of the cookies used on our client’s sites, what those cookies are and what they do, we have been able to offer a solution that provides for the Regulations when they come into force.

The solution seeks to inform website visitors about the use and nature of cookies present and offers them the choice to opt-out of having third party cookies stored on their devices.

We have also provided advice and best practice upon updating Cookie and Privacy Policies on site which goes further to inform about types of cookies and their uses plus offers information about disabling cookies from within browsers.

With just 26 days to go to ensure your site is complaint, take a look at the following resources to make sure you know your legal obligations:
The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011
Information Commissioner’s Office
Econsultancy
International Chamber of Commerce

The Chip Shop Awards is about fostering and recognising creativity with no boundaries and no rules. It’s an international creative awards, open to anyone with great ideas.

Since its launch in 2002, these awards have produced some of the cleverest, funniest, worst taste advertising and design ever seen.

The ‘Chip’ and ‘Vinegar’ awards will be announced and handed out at the awards do being held in June in London.

Book your ticket below for this year’s Chip Shop Awards and find out more about the format of the event here.

Victorious by Rob Green: LHM Media

Chip Shop Awards: Event Details

Date: Wednesday 13th June
Venue: Ministry of Sound, London
Time: 7.30pm – late
Dress code: casual

You can book single tickets or take your whole team and receive a discount.  Tickets are priced at:

• Single tickets (1 -7 tickets ) £69 + vat each
• 8 Tickets -£66 + vat each
• 9 tickets – £64 + vat each
• 10 tickets – £60 + vat each
• 11 or more tickets – £58 +vat each

We look forward to seeing you there, and we wish the very best of luck to Rob!

Although we believe this is true to a point, we do believe that the UK’s creative and media agencies hold the key to bigger brands for Facebook, which means ad spend and big revenues rather than in technical innovation.

That being said, Facebook Ads do work. Working with two major brands in 2012 with social media, Facebook Ads are cheaper and are more targeted, compared with paid search advertising on search engines such as Google.

Speaking to Campaign Everson said:

“Agencies are critical… It is absolutely essential for us to have tight relationships with the agencies, which helps us scale.

“My team compared to most of our competitors – Google or Microsoft – we’re smaller, and we’re smaller for a reason. We believe it helps us to be more nimble.

“We want to partner with the agencies; we have zero interest in dis-intermediating them. I have a dedicated agency team now that works under me at a global level, and we have folks in each region.

“So we have a team in the UK that focuses exclusively on the agency community. The faster we can make sure that the agency community is not only up to speed but really being strategic advisors to clients the better for our business, because they help us scale.”

Everson said: “We need them in our corner. Creative agencies are critical. The way the creative agency community has to think about this is that for many decades they’ve been thinking about the 30 second spot or the print or the billboard.

“They have to think about Facebook as an open, creative canvas, and their skill set around sparking a conversation is probably a new skill set.

“Creative agencies used to think about why should someone care, they now have to think about why would they care and why would they share?”

Facebook’s advertising revenues rose 69% to hit $3,154m (£2bn) in 2011, according to accounts filed for its $5bn initial public offering in February. Advertising was cited as Facebook’s driving commercial force, responsible for 85% of its $3.7 billion total revenues last year.

Key areas of investigation

• Social media usage, investment and resourcing
• Digital capability, skills and talent
• Data, privacy and regulatory issues
• Social media listening and monitoring
• Barriers to progress in 2012

Please take part in this important benchmark today – and share with your network:

• The survey only takes, on average, 15mins and is 100% confidential
• Participants will come from a balanced mix of B2B and B2C organisations, ensuring findings will be meaningful for you
• You’ll receive a complimentary copy of the Social Media Benchmark wave two report (value £95)
• You’ll receive a priority invitation to the main launch event and live webcast in June 2012

Take the survey here

View the Social Media Benchmark website

LHM has created a number of campaigns for our clients in the Health sector, to support users giving up the habit. Our latest is the ‘Stop Smoking Support Buddy’ built for Health Exchange which is a free tool (available on Windows Vista and above) which can be downloaded to your computer desktop, allowing a personal and private service.

Here it will provide you daily tips and advice to help beat the cravings, keep an active lifestyle and show you the benefits to your body (and wallet!).

The UK government will launch a consultation on Monday 16th April to debate if plain packaging could work to decrease the number of smoking related deaths in the UK.

Lansley said to The Times:  “We don’t work in partnership with the tobacco companies because we are trying to arrive at a point where they have no business in this country.”

“Smoking remains one of the most significant challenges to public health.

Each year it accounts for over 100,000 deaths in the UK and one in two long-term smokers will die prematurely from a smoking disease.

“That is why the health ministers across the UK have a responsibility to look closely at initiatives that might encourage smokers to quit and stop young people taking up smoking in the first place.

“Through the forthcoming consultation we want to hear as many views as possible about whether tobacco packing should remain unchanged, plain packaging should be adopted or a different option should be considered.”

A ban on tobacco displays in large shops started earlier this month, and smaller shops will have to follow suit by 2015.

The latest hard hitting ad from the Department of Health highlighting the dangers of smoking in cars:

Josh Graff, EMEA Marketing Solutions Director at LinkedIn, shared the comparisons with the audience as something everyone talks about, gets a bit nervous of, gives it a go and finds it a little disappointing. Then you work at it, and it gets better with practise, turning it into something you wouldn’t want to do without!

Along with a few laughs, it was met with nodding heads around the room. Are we doing it right? Do we know what we’re doing? Or are we just fumbling about because we think we should get involved, but aren’t quite sure how.

The CIM social media benchmark survey, conducted in Autumn 2011, showed some interesting results, coming from businesses large and small, b2b and b2c, national and global. Most of them are having a go, but an astounding amount are working without knowing what they are achieving. 80% have a Social Media strategy but 7% do not track any results.

When it comes to investment, 2011 saw 6 out of 10 companies increase their Social Media spend and a higher growth is anticipated in 2012. So where should this invested time be spent?

The advice was as follows:

1) Make more use of monitoring competitors – a practise that most companies don’t do, or rate as a high value activity.

2) Measure your activity. And then take action on those results. Don’t listen to your customers if you’re just going to ignore what they’re saying!

3) Get your the right skill set. Only 6% of respondents say they had the skills to deliver their Social Media campaign. 19% said they were completely Ill-equipped

4) Relevant content is key. Without an understanding of who your customers are and what they need to hear, your campaign will result in wasted engagement and loss of potential customers

5) Use Social Media as a lead generation tool. Companies dedicate real time and budget to this, but it can and should be done through Social Media

6) Continual communication. Once you strike up a relationship with your community, it’s essential you keep it going. They may come to rely on your for information and you need to be ready to give it to them

But what are the risks?

Well, coming back to the original analogy, it’s all very well having a teenage sex comparison, but the difference is that one is done behind closed doors so no one really knows what went on, and the other is done in public so everyone knows when an error is made.

The key here if you’re worried, is to start by listening. To your customers and your competitors. You’ll soon learn what you can and can’t say. People expect you to share and be open with your entire audience. Be transparent, but you are accountable for what you say and do. If you upset them, customers will switch off. From you. And your brand. But not from Social Media.

So, what’s next?

Experiment with Social Media – its an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed, but don’t waste it. Without measurement it’s useless. You need objectives or how will you know if you’ve been successful? Social Media can be overwhelming as it never ends but we need to be comfortable with not being comfortable with it or we’ll never learn.

LHM has been working with the CIM to create the website and surveys, and the next wave of the benchmark is now live! To be part of it and have your say, take the simple online survey to share your activity and plans for 2012. To take part click here:

And make sure you visit the website to for all the latest updates, news, interviews and insights: http://www.smbenchmark.com

Written by Liz Hemes – Account Director at LHM Media.
Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter

During the double bill of the series, viewers were treated to some of the most iconic ads from the sixties including Tetley Tea, Kit Kat, Fairy Liquid and Cadbury’s Milk Tray.

American Airlines Steve Davis, marketing director, EMEA, said: “This initiative provides an opportunity to showcase our historical advertising, which is then a great segue into the present day with our Kevin Spacey/Individual campaign currently on air.”

For the opening night and the launch of the fifth series 14 adverts in total were showcased. The first two ad breaks were in black and white, and the third ad break in colour.

Mad Men is an American dramatic television series created and produced by Matthew Weiner. It premiered on July 19, 2007, and completed its fourth season on October 17, 2010.

The adverts were a great idea, and at LHM we all had our favourites. Enjoy some of the commercials that were featured below:

On March 30th 2012, Facebook will automatically change your current Facebook Brand page to the new Facebook Timeline format, designed to create a truly social experience.

Is your brand ready to make the most of the new changes?

The LHM team are currently talking to our clients about how to make the most of the new Facebook Timeline, building the success of their social marketing strategy. Here are some key tips for you to be thinking about over the next 3 weeks:

Profile Picture:

Your profile picture (note the Card Town logo below) will now be featured on top of a large ‘Cover image’ within the header of your new Timeline page. In most cases, try to feature your logo here. The profile image can be uploaded at 180 x 180 pixels, and wil be scaled down to 32 x 32 pixels for newsfeed viewing.

Cover Image:

The Cover image is the large image (in the header above) which should be uploaded at 851 x 315 pixels for best results. This is a new on-page area and at first glance, one of the most noticable differences of the Facebook Timeline package. It comes with strict rules though, it must not include purchase info, prices or calls to action. Consult Facebook’s advertising rules on this if you’re not sure.

Timeline Layout:

The layout of the page is also very different. The idea is that your page will become a brand narrative than a message board, it offers many new ways to customise your brand visuals and posts within your brand page.

As ever, compelling content wins the day with your followers, leading to increased engagement. These could be humourous short status updates, visuals, video or audio based content. Facebook Timeline is set up to showcase these types of posts in a simple way for followers to pick them up quickly. Emphasis is also in how friends can visualise activity with brands between each other too, hopefully leading to more ‘likes’.

Why’s it called Facebook Timeline?

The structure of the new Facebook format is built on a historical timeline. This is an amazing tool for businesses or sports teams with real heritage. You could go back in time just like Manchester United Football Club have below. Note the timeline is 1967, and the 1967–68 season was one of the most successful seasons for the club. A really nice touch!

Friends get priority:

The new brand pages feature a section that enables followers to view how many of their friends are following the brand too, and what the latest engagement between them was.

This is a powerful tool, and encourages more interaction with people you know. This adds extra pressure on brands to reply quickly and effectively to people on facebook, as friends are watching!

Star Stories and Pinning:

As a Facebook Administrator, you can now highlight your favourite content and stories by just clicking on the star next the content. This showcases the story by expanding it double the width on your timeline. Just as easily, you can hide content from the past. This is quite handy if it’s time based, or a complaint that doesn’t need to be highlighted constantly and has been resolved.

Also you can pin the content, which makes sure it stays highlighted at the top of the timeline for seven days. Quite handy if you have a promotion that you want to run.Below is an example from Coldplay, demonstrating the width of a post that’s been starred.

No welcome tab:

The new timeline update has seen the removal of the default landing page tab. This was a brand favourite and will need marketers to rethink their promotional page tabs. This could mean the Cover Image needs to do the hard work, providing that special welcome that new fans will need.

Any tabs you have from previous Facebook pages will still be displayed at 520 pixels in width, but the new Facebook Timeline tabs are much wider, displaying with 810 width providing a visually better looking tab. All tabs require an icon too, to be featured at 111 x 74 pixels. Note the icons in the Starbucks Timeline page, these are how fans access the the tabs (featured for Starbucks Card and International below).

Overall we think this change is disappointing, as not all tabs can be featured like before. Emphasis should now be on your brands content, rather than lots of app pages.

More control of communication:

Facebook administrators now have more tools to choose how conversations are displayed on their brand pages. They also have the ability to directly private message customers, rather than do it on the main page. This will no doubt be handy for customer service issues, and for providing details to competition winners.

If you have a new project for Facebook or are looking to start utilising it for your business, get in touch with LHM, we’ll be happy to help engage your customers, leading to great rewards for both you and your ‘fans’.

Written by Ian Hughes, Managing Director of LHM Media
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