LHM were delighted when ‘Victorious’ bagged Rob a Vinegar award for his concept for Best Use of Bad Taste.

The Chip Shop Awards, organised by The Drum, have been running for a decade and provide a unique and important platform from which to celebrate creativity in its purest from. By focussing on ‘great ideas’, the ‘Chips’ sets itself apart from other creative contests:-

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

Last night the Ministry of Sound kindly played host to some of the finest established and upcoming names within the industry and showcased some truly juice-flowingly spine-tingly concepts.

LHM’s Rob Green was supported on the night by the rest of the LHM team who were mostly but not exclusively seen applauding and nodding to their following category favourites (and ‘whooping’  to Rob’s ‘Victorious’ of course).

Best Use of Bad Taste
Considerate Suicide – Elvis Communications

Best Press Advert
Tat – HROC

Best Remake of an Existing Advert
Girl on the platform – Limehouse LAB

Best Use of Regional Dialect
A? – Little Tadpole

Best Packaging Design
Toastie Loaf – AaronShaw

Best Outdoor Advert
Free Snowman – Steve Lownes

Best Self Promotion
Willing to start at the bottom – Amar Marwaha

Best Use of Annoying Jingle
We buy any bra – IAS b2b Marketing

Full Chip Chops Awards Results 2012

We’ve already got our pencils sharpened for the Chip Shop Awards 2013 and look forward to the results of an even more inspiring event.

Drop us a line at hello@lhmmedia.com to order a large scoop of our finest for your brand.

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?

Pinterest enables you to upload pictures to a virtual board. So it’s a bit like Facebook without the drama. The site lets you store and share your favourite images on the web.

Sounds simple enough right? It is.

The stats from the U.S.A show Pinterest is the first network to get to 10 million unique visitors than any independent website ever. Even more interesting is that 97% of users are women, and 9 million of its 10.4 million users actually log in through Facebook.

In the UK, there are currently 200,000 users. Highlighted in the recent infographic from visual.ly

We’re loving the possibilities of Pinterest, both for the public and retailers. I don’t think it will be long until we see some stunning conversions from E-Commerce sites, enabling people to discover, share and even convert from this platform. It’s widely reported that Pinterest generates more referral traffic to brands than LinkedIn, Google Plus and YouTube combined.

If a picture says a thousand words, then Pinterest could develop in to something quite special.

Example of a Pinterest search: bikes

The US was already on high alert as the tenth anniversary approaches. And the hackers used the account to send messages to over 120,000 followers, claiming that Ground Zero was again victim of terrorist attacks in New York.

The tweets said “This is not a joke, Ground Zero has just been attacked. We’re attempting to get reporters on the scene. #groundzeroattacked.”

Just a minute later the hackers announced “NBCNEWS hacked by the Script Kiddies. Follow them at @s_kiddies!”

Twitter responded quickly to the hack, suspending the account of the group. While Luke Russert the NBC News political correspondent: “Please ignore NOT TRUE tweets coming from @NBC News. We got hacked by tasteless despicable attention seeking criminals.”

The Script Kiddies were also linked to the Fox News twitter hack, which led to the reports that the president had been assassinated to over 33,000 people. But the Ground Zero attack is certainly one of the worst examples we’ve seen yet, and this growing trend is causing real concern for news broadcasters.

They described themselves on a cached version of their twitter page as “Anonymous Supporters :: Hackers :: Exploiting simplistic methods with hilarious results :: Occasionally doing it for teh lulz :: We are The Script Kiddies

It is another reminder of the responsibility that businesses need to take when for the passwords and access to your online account.

How to protect yourself on Twitter

Personal Information:
Make sure you never share personal details on twitter. Passwords, email addresses, phone numbers.

Third Party Applications:
Avoid these at all costs. I have seen IT people who have been lured in to these types of applications. Normally by fake surveys and links from people they know, that look trustworthy but clearly aren’t. You can check what third party applications your twitter account is linked to here: http://twitter.com/account/connections

Change your password:
Automated bots are used to gain access to your Twitter account. You can avoid being hacked by changing your password regularly.

Preview short URL’s:
Shortened URLs are often used to hide unsafe web addresses. Clicking and visiting unsafe websites leads to dangers of malware, phishing websites, etc. Click the “Show Preview Information for Short URLs” option in your clients such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck for added protection.

Image courtesy of eviltomthai - Flickr Creative Commons

Do you often think that your page isn’t creative enough, or doesn’t quite appeal to your customer base? If so you need to read on.

There’s no doubt that Facebook poses a number of challenges to businesses. With over 500 million active global users, and 250m that use Facebook on a daily basis, the opportunity to be part of the crowd is captivating, but does come with a health warning. Who will manage it all? How often should you post content? And what type of content should you post?

Let’s have a look at some of the things we’ve learned to help your business page grow in ‘likes’ and engagement using your all important landing page.

Planning

The first thing to think about is what benefit your landing page will give your your company or campaign? Is it increased sales you’re after or more traffic and customer engagement? Could your business cope if you have to provide a customer service channel through it?

One of the best ways to find out is to involve your team, get support during the planning process, and explore what front line staff deem most appropriate. After all they’re dealing with your customers daily.

Measurement

Your plans in place, your ideas for content created. The most important area to think about next is how to measure your page. There are plenty of great tools to measure Facebook pages, including TwentyFeet, Sprout Social and the inbuilt Facebook Insights.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to measure your work, this will show you what works and what doesn’t, enabling you to react quickly and provide information that customers are searching for. Facebook Insights will provide you with information such as:

- Engagement Feedback (Which were the most commented on or liked posts)
- Impressions (How many times your content was presented to followers in their Facebook stream)
- ‘Likes’, ‘Unlikes’, Comments and ‘Unsubscribes’ (Activity based on the page and its content)

First Impressions

Most Facebook users tend to come straight through to your wall, but this won’t build ‘likes’ quickly, you’ll need to be much more persuasive.

A much easier way to build up the ‘likes’ to your page from your visitors through a bespoke landing page, added to your Facebook page by installing a plug in called Static FMBL.

This now provides you with an option of adding a custom HTML web landing page (and further pages if required) inside the Facebook platform. The beauty of this is its web, so you can do anything you like with it in terms of design or development.

We thought we’d feature some of our favourite pages so you can see just how persuasive brands can be using a landing page.

HIS Hair Clinics

This is a page LHM created for global hair loss brand His Hair Clinics. The idea was to use the HIS landing page to feature a limited voucher code.

It proved to be a successful move, tempting users to ‘like’ the page to redeem a  voucher code, which generated sales and an 113% increase in new followers in just 1 month. Notice how the design of the landing page window is blurred out too, another reason for our customers to ‘like’ the page and see what’s behind the door.

H&M

This is an example of a page that shows you don’t need clever creative to get results. Sometimes simplicity achieves much more, and this landing page is designed to direct the user to a specific area, in the shortest amount of time.

At the time of writing, H&M have 8,066,090 followers and enjoying great social media success with a strong digital presence throughout.

If you’ve not seen it, check out the H&M Dressing Room web application too!

Topshop

The clothing retailer’s Facebook landing page has 4 main areas of focus. The first one is the call to action, requesting the customer to ‘like’ the page. Secondly it focuses on product, showing the latest Autumn/Winter range.

Interestingly, they feature a large Customer Service tab in the main window of the page.

This tells us that they wish to avoid negative comment where possible on the Topshop Facebook wall, and directing customers to a customer service website page. A wise move, there is nothing worse than having to deal with issues in public, especially if 1.5m people are viewing your every move.

The fourth area of promotion is the Topshop social media channels, with additional tabs for the blog, Twitter and YouTube channels. At the bottom of the page, there is a user guide offering recommendations to its followers in how to communicate on the Topshop page. This is a smart move, especially with millions of users accessing the page each day.

Red Bull

The Red Bull facebook page get’s straight to the point, a nice graphic pointing out to the user where the Facebook ‘like’ button is. A simple call to action that explains to the user exactly what Red Bull want them to do.

Again much like the HIS Hair Clinics example, users can access exclusive video content faded in the background, just by clicking the button. This direct approach is working too, with a total of 22,082,535 followers at the time of writing.

Blog by Ian Hughes, Managing Director of LHM – The Digital Marketing Agency

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were visiting The Summerfield Community Centre in the Winson Green area of the city, providing support to the families and our local community where three men were sadly killed during last week’s riots.

The ‘Machan Express’ café and convenience store owner (pictured in red) appeared thrilled that one of the world’s most famous couples had popped in for tea and cake.

His business had also been targeted during the tension and today would have been a welcome break in what has been a tough week for him and businesses in the heart of the city.

Whilst the crowds patiently waited their big shot, the LHM team were lucky enough to muscle in and get a few great snaps from the front.

Photos by Steve Lawrence (LHM) @stevelhm
Video by Ian Hughes (LHM) @ianhlhm

Integration
Google+ enables users to have all of the great functionality of Facebook, but with much more control.

Furthermore, the search engine giant owns the majority of global online search business, an estimated user base of 170m Gmail accounts and millions of users accessing its Google services that can all be plugged straight in to a Google+ account such as Blogger, YouTube (490m users), Google Docs and Google Music.

This integration of services certainly opens the way to take on Facebook, and only Google have the reach to do it.

Circles
The new ‘Circles’ function provides users with a way to categorise users from each other and something Google say is poles apart from Facebook, enabling you to group friends, family, colleagues and control what you share with them.

Many of us will have faced that awkward moment when a family member or a boss has sent a Facebook invite, now you can accept but control what is shared with them and when. When you place people into circles, or when you share with your circles, Google+ doesn’t disclose the titles of the circles you are in.

Sparks
Users can select real time data feeds that are provided to their network while intuitively the service looks for videos and articles that it thinks you’ll appreciate, so that when you’re free there’s always something to watch, read and share.

Hangouts
The Google+ feature that could drive a new audience in to the site is ‘Hangouts’, this enables users to chat with up to a group of 10 people, and leave a video message for them compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.

Privacy of users
Google+ users have been receptive to the way privacy is being dealt with by Google+ and much easier to leave the service than its rival. Facebook’s privacy settings have always been under scrutiny, many users leaving the site due to security risks, bugs and because it’s very hard to leave once you’re in the Facebook network with a deactivation period of two weeks.

Mobile
The rise of Google Android will see Google+ bring much more interest in its handsets, providing Apple with a tough challenge, which have in recent times had to innovate quicker and allow devices to be sold by multiple service operators. Apples previous market position enabled them to charge high for handsets such as the iPhone 3 and dictate to its users which provider they were to use.

It’s highly likely that Google+ will be developed in a way that’s easier, quicker and smarter on an Android device compared to an Apple one, meaning that consumers will adopt Android if Google+ enjoys the success it’s being tipped for.

Written by Ian Hughes, Managing Director of LHM Media

The question to ask is are you happy for your business contacts on LinkedIn to view your content on Twitter? And are your followers on LinkedIn also your Facebook friends anyway? You’ll probably find that you’re connected to very few people on Twitter that you follow on LinkedIn. So this begs the question, are you ultimately providing a spam feed to the people you connect with the most?

Your community of followers, likers, subscribers, friends and business contacts all require a mix of professional but also personal approach to how you engage with them. If you’re a twitter addict and linking your posts to LinkedIn, you could be creating a very negative effect on your reputation.

Relevant and informative posts, great content and careful engagement will always provide a more positive route for your communication, for business and pleasure.

Syncing done right enables you to do more with less time, but it is still something to be used sparingly across networks where possible. Just because the technology is there, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to use. Twitter is the pub… LinkedIn the business lunch and Facebook when you invite them back to your house.