We’re big fans of really effective  social media campaigns here at PrimaryPosition and sponsoring this award is the least we can do to encourage the pursuit of excellence for agencies operating in this emerging and fast-evolving field. We’d like to congratulate all the finalists on getting onto the shortlist and wish them all the best of luck in the Mansion House on the 17th of May.

We hope to see you all there as well so don’t forget to go get your tickets as soon as you can.

There’s a host of great agencies competing for the award this year. The full list in the “Best Agency” category is below but for a full list of categories and finalists pop along to the Social Media Awards.

Social Media Awards – Best Agency Finalists 2012

WHPR/Ogilvy
Simply Zesty
Eighty Twenty
Creative District
Irish International
Blue Cube
MediaVest
Starcom
Cybercom
Ican

Good luck to all, and we’ll see you on the night.

If you have a client that sucks up your time and pays badly, then they’re not interested in you and thinking that you can solve it by being a better provider, then you’re on drugs.

If they think that they can get better value by having you look at something in your free time, when your time is most valuable, and pay you least of all because they really can’t afford to invest in their own business, then run.

They’re robbing you and you’re just forming the other part of a co-dependency relationship.

Interesting that he challenges the “build a website then market it” model completely, pointing out that who and how you intend to market ought to have a bearing on the web presence you build in the first place. Listen to the full interview on Focusme.

What his success cements in place is youtubes place as the number 2 search and discovery tool on the internet. Yes, it is a video platform, but a lot of content from slides to songs are being converted for the purpose.

Lets have a look at the current state of Australian (Belgian born) artist Gotye’s massive viral hit. Here it is if you missed it.

Posted in July of last year there are now over 133 million views on the original official video.

Amazing! What a story, right? Only half the story really though.

Here’s what else is happening form a quick glance at youtube and only counting videos that got over 500,000 views the song has spread around by another 117 million views via other users. Those extra views include covers, lyrics versions, parodies and live performances.

Here’s the breakdown (Original song posted in July last year)
133 million views
117 million secondary views of the song
630 thousand likes on youtube
170 thousand comments on youtube
7 million likes on Facebook
185 thousand shares on Twitter
7 thousand Google +1′s

Just using our very basic counting method that pushes Gotye’s total viral spread to over 250 million on youtube. That is a vast reach and it cements youtube as top of the pops in a range of categories.

It’s the second biggest search engine in the world after Google.
It’s the winner in content sharing and virality across the entire social spectrum.
It’s the winner in content discovery.
It had over 2 billion searches per day 2 years ago
Arguably the biggest music search engine with the music from the second largest video property VEVO syndicated into it’s platform too.

Why is it the winner?
Not only is it the second largest search engine on it’s own. It also integrates seamlessly with Googles universal search operating since 2009 so videos often end up on page one. In the social sphere it is almost unique in it’s ability to not only use it’s own network to spread content virally but also every other social network as well and drive that traffic back to itself or control the content viewing experience and the measurement thereof.

Seriously though, 133 Million views on a single video since last July is impressive right? But what if I told you that I could show you a story almost as impressive and immediately related.

Remember that 117 Million extra views for the song? What if I were to tell you that over 81 Million of them were for a cover version posted in January this year. What if I told you that over 3.5 Million of them were for a parody, not of the original song, but of the cover version and that the cover had triggered a series of parody versions that are all well into the hundreds of thousands in views and still growing? Interesting right.

Here’s the breakdown (Remember this is a cover version posted in january)
81 million views
5 million secondary views of the song
760 thousand likes on youtube
135 thousand comments on youtube
4 million likes on Facebook
247 thousand shares on Twitter
12 thousand Google +1′s

Some interesting take aways here
100 thousand  more people actively liked the WOTE version on youtube.
100 thousand more people shared it on twitter.
5 thousand more people +1′d it. Almost twice as many.

It’s clear to see from a distribution and reach perspective that this cover version of the original song added value to the original. It also added value for Walk Off The Earth but then value from content isn’t a zero sum game.

It’s also important to remember that none of this would be possible without youtube. Where’s your content? Is it good enough to compete for your audience in this global market?

I do love Gotye’s version but I actually prefer the WOTE cover version so I’m posting it here.

Oh and before I forget Here’s that parody. Enjoy

I’m over in Dubai in the UAE doing bits and pieces and also enjoying the amazing city landscapes, architecture and gorgeous food – and since the start of planning my trip, I can’t stop thinking about how Dubai is marketing itself online.

Firstly, the properties are fantastic, and while prices for some things seem high, others are quite cheap.

You can book a 5-star hotel (apart from the resorts) with over 130 to choose from for between €50 and €100 a night (about 250-500 AED). We found that affiliate and visitor information sites (like http://www.tripadvisor.ie, http://www.tripadvisor.ie/, http://www.travelrepublic.co.uk/ and YouTube) were by far the best sources to determine our budget for hotels. The worst were the actual hotel websites.

Our first hotel, located in Bur Dubai, was really suitable for Business travellers and was close to the airport. When contacted directly, they quoted amounts about 4-5 times higher than the hotel comparison sites for the same hotel.

So, when approached by someone who eventually found their hotel online, and could have made a direct booking with no commission they chose to instead accept 75% less via a hotel reservations site and pay a commission. This makes no business sense to me at all.

The hotels we did book were based on what we could find out about them on Trip Advisor (discounting any blatantly “I’ve a bee in my bonnet” negative posts), but mostly on what we saw on YouTube. Good quality information, showing guests about what they offer, what they can do and where the hotel is located costs considerably less than handing over 75% of your projected turnover from internet-based sales.

It’s a remarkable lesson for business owners – when you underinvest in your website and web assets (like your website, YouTube Channel, twitter, Facebook page) – then it will have a direct and potentially fatal cost to your business.

SEO adds value to your business by bringing the end customer with the product developer. Affiliates add less value and more cost to the transactional business.

Ultimately we found the best value via a travel agency in Kerry – who gave us the best advice and value on our second hotel, which was just unbelievable.

Some of the Global Companies in the DIC

Beautifully magnificently, awesomely simple.

There is a habit, in our lazy use of language, of confusing the idea of simple with the idea of easy.

Making a point in a long rambling discussion is easy. It requires knowledge but because you have an engaged (or captive) audience, it doesn’t require hard work to deliver that knowledge. It might be “long” work but it’s not hard, it’s not difficult. Anyone can do it with enough time.

What if you don’t have a captive audience? What if you don’t have time? What if you need to grab them as they drive by, digitally or physically.

The message you see or hear is often simple. Trying to make it simple is the hard work.

Don’t think it’ll be easy, don’t do long and don’t do complex. Don’t be lazy

Do the hard work to make things simple.

Inspired by the guys at the #imuroadshow today

Football pitches through the ages 
Once upon a time before pitch technology improved the average amateur teams pitch would get a bit bare. The solution offered to this was always “leave it alone and let the grass grow a bit” and all would be well.
The problem of course was that it never was and we perpetually had poor playing surfaces for our field sports. This is the old thinking.

Since the 90’s though the number of purpose built pitches has increased dramatically. The dissemination of knowledge about pitch care has too. So on our modern pitches we now expect good surfaces. An important thing learned along the way is that it’s not just about the grass it’s about the roots and the soil too. The more roots we have the stronger our pitch surface is, the more blades of grass we have the less likely we are to have pitch wear. So cutting grass shorter more regularly and aerating the soil is the best way to maintain a pitch.

So it bemused me no end recently to hear an older groundsman dictate on how he was leaving the pitch be and letting the grass grow to help restore the pitch. I didn’t have much hope of an improvement in the quality of the playing surface. Old thinking, new era, informed customer.

Dangerous thinking
That’s the danger of applying an old way of thinking to a new situation and with this new generation of informed consumers, brand marketers especially need to be wary of the trap.
Remember these 3 things always before assuming that what you learned in a marketing or business degree course is relevant to the current situation.

1. The old wisdom, while accepted, may have been wrong even in the old world but we never had the means to test it. 
2. It may not produce the effect or results you were hoping for (and perhaps it never did) 
3. Do you want to run the risk of alienating a customer who is better informed than you about: 
• The problem itself 
• How easy it is to be informed about it accurately (If I know, why don’t you?) 
• How you ought to communicate it 
• The value of what you do 

And you better believe that they are more informed because in this new connected age the information is here at their finger tips and communication is baked in.