Tipp-Ex’s very clever YouTube campaign, could well be the ‘new’ Old Spice viral.  The Tipp-Ex social media campaign is a development of the very popular 2004 interactive online campaign from BK.

In BK’s subservient chicken campaign (to promote its ‘Tender Crisp Chicken Sandwich’) users find themselves looking at, what appears to be, a live webcam of a person dressed in a chicken costume.

Type in a command and the chicken responds. You can make it ‘pray’, ‘sneeze’, ‘hula hoop’ and, yes, you can even ‘choke the chicken’.

The BK campaign – and remember this is pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook – collected 1m+ hits within the first 24 hours and has since surpassed 400,000,000 (yep, 400m).

So will Tipp-Ex’s social media campaign – in which you can type in a command for the bear to follow – emulate this?

It’s certainly likely to replicate the sharp spike in YouTube views, but unlikely to hit anywhere near 400m views.  You have to remember that the subservient chicken was truly groundbreaking six years ago, whereas Tipp-Ex is borrowing the concept.

Still, take nothing away from Tipp-Ex, it’s a very clever campaign, cute in its delivery – we’re loving the reach out of the video by the hunter to Tipp-Ex out the word ‘shoots’ – and is certainly white hot on Twitter right now.

See 54 of the world’s best social media campaigns.

Ps random true fact: the mother of one of The Monkees – Mike Nesmith – invented Tipp-Ex (well, the brand ‘Liquid Paper’), and sold it for $47.5m (plus royalties) to the Gillette Corporation.

Our Social Media Campaigns Hall of Fame attracted a lot of noise when we issued it earlier this month. Our post received around 300 reTweets and the story was also picked up by media such as B2B Marketing, Netimperative, New Media Monthly, The Drum and UTalkMarketing, gaining further exposure.

We’re now looking for suggestions for when we update our list later this year.  Did we miss any?  Send your suggestions of clever social media campaigns to social@umpf.co.uk

Looking for a social media campaign?

Rather than just send a card to PR Week to celebrate its 25th birthday, we wanted to do something which delivered a bit more Umpf. So we came up with a little digital stunt.

We sent our birthday card 2,983 miles and had it displayed on the largest digital sign in the world – the Reuters sign in Times Square, New York.  See the grainy shots we grabbed today (20 Aug) from a webcam over the road, in the video, above.  Here’s a live view of the Reuters sign (it’s the right-hand webcam).

At over 7,000 square feet and 23 stories tall, our card will be – and we’re pretty confident about this – the biggest birthday card they’ll get this year.

Happy 25th birthday to Danny and everyone at PR Week – still delivering PR news with added Umpf after all these years.

The image, right, was taken by a photographer in Times Square on the afternoon of Friday 20 August 2010.

Whether you’re one of the world’s superbrands or a small, local supplier, clever social media campaigns can help raise product awareness, increase sales, drive footfall, add fans, improve SEO and online visibility, or just make people think ‘cool, I like that company’.

Some of the world’s best social media campaigns are highlighted below.  They are case studies that, for one reason or another, have made us think ‘great campaign’.   In deciding what is/is not a relevant case study, our social media litmus test has been to ask if they involve either online social interaction, user participation or user-generated content.

The Social Media Campaign Hall of Fame is in no particular order and, as is the case with lists like this, there’ll be great campaigns you love that are not yet listed, and others you feel should not be included.  This is not a list of the campaigns that have the most followers/biggest fan base/most views.  It’s about doing creative, interesting campaigns.  And, of course, that’s subjective.

If you have a suggestion for inclusion, email it to social@umpf.co.uk.  And please do share your comments at the foot of the page.

Umpf

Boxing Clever – Nike

Checking in at telephone boxes is the theme of this clever location game from Nike.  After registering online, where maps are available, players run between two phone boxes and enter their unique user ID via an 0800 number.  This logs their run, earning online points per postcode – the runner with the most points per postcode wins.  Speed, stamina and insider knowledge also earn badges.

Seriously Good Work – Warner Bros

To promote the release of its latest film, Batman: The Dark Knight in 2007, Warner Bros launched its ‘Why So Serious?’ campaign.  After first decoding clues at whysoserious.com and taking part in an on and off line treasure hunt, fans were given access to the first photos of the Joker, as well as a movie trailer.  Fans who sent in photos of themselves dressed as the Joker received a copy of The Gotham Times in the post. The campaign involved 10 million fans in 75 countries.

Beggar’s Belief – Ascendgence

To raise awareness of his new internet marketing agency Ascendgence – and to prove his ability to create viral campaigns – Sean Dolan, with his father Kevin Dolan, created PimpThisBum.com, a website to help homeless Tim Edwards off the street. The site received over 558,000 4,843,420 hits, raised over $60,000 $100,000 for Mr Edwards and other homeless people within the Houston area, as well as getting Tim into an alcohol treatment course. Tim calls the Dolans’ project “a blessing”. He hopes to complete his treatment successfully, secure a job and find a home.

*Following publication of this case study, Sean Dolan contacted Umpf with an update to the stats, above, the video, below, and to provide a further heart-warming note about Tim:

“He’s over a year and a half sober, is employed at Nicol Pattern as an apprentice machinist and is one of the greatest guys I know.”

Green With Envy – Greenpeace

In response to the Turkish Government’s intention to build more power stations, Greenpeace created a clever, multi-channel campaign around a fake political candidate, Seyfi Solukal. Online hype was generated through various social networking sites and online media with a focus on the environment. Having accumulated significant backing and publicity, a press conference (see video below) was held where Solukal’s true identity – as a member of Greenpeace – was revealed. As a result, 74 candidates now back Greenpeace’s Climate Declaration, compared with just five prior to the campaign. The campaign won a WOMMY. And was shortlisted for a Golden Drum.

Red Balloon At Night, Social Media Delight – DARPA

Despite sounding like something from the TV series Lost, DARPA is a real organisation (part of the US Department of Defense).  In December 2009 it conducted a test to see how quickly social networking could solve a problem. Or, in its own words, simply “To explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.”  It hid ten moored, eight-foot red balloons across America.  The first to name the exact locations won $40,000.  The prize was won by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who used a pyramid-style cash incentive scheme to encourage word-of-mouth participation.  It took MIT just nine hours to pinpoint the exact locations of the ten balloons.

Online Blend Recognition – Blendtec

The series of videos produced by food blender manufacturer Blendtec, based around the concept of “Will it blend?”, have something of a cult following online (300,000+ YouTube subscribers).  They show founder Tom Dickson attempting to blend unusual items (the iPhone blend has hit around 9m views).  Dickson has made numerous appearances on popular US television shows including The Tonight Show, as well as gaining a cult status with consumers buying into the brand’s popularity, with T-shirts and other related products. Fans can post pictures and videos on BlendTec’s Facebook page of items they want Tom to blend next.

You Are Here – Nokia

To raise awareness of its free new Ovi Maps application, Nokia erected a large interactive electronic signpost in central London (purportedly the biggest mobile sign ever constructed). The public were invited to text or email their location as well as a message, with the crane rotating accordingly.

The Social Media Fast Lane – Ford Fiesta

When Ford in the US identified a potential 18-40-yr-old driving audience of 70m citizens – 77% of whom were actively using social media – instead of the traditional journo junket car launch, they opted for a grassroots social media campaign to promote the new Fiesta.

They placed 100 Fiestas in the hands of ‘social agents’; each agent was given a task every month for six months.  It resulted in 4m+ YouTube views; 500,000+ Flickr views; 3m+ Twitter impressions.

Sam De La Garza told Umpf: “Overall awareness is equal to or greater than some of our products that have been on the market for three years.

“We’ve had over 100 million media impressions without the use of any TV placements and close to 5,000 reservations for the product without traditional media reach.”  See the original campaign.

If You’re Happy & You Know It, Drink A Coke – Coca Cola

As part of its ‘happiness campaign’, Coca Cola installed an unusual vending machine in an American college.  As it dispensed a variety of products – including a four-foot long sandwich – the reactions of students were recorded and uploaded online.  1m+ views in just over a week.

Mashable also has a nice ‘making of the video’ interview.

Pix From The Flix – Orange

Trying to tap into a younger following for the Baftas, Orange, the official sponsor, set up an account with Flixster allowing users a live view of the red carpet. An interactive quiz attracted 50,000 entrants trying to win tickets to events. Orange claimed a 10% increase in traffic to the Orange Bafta website as a result.

Let’s Be Frank – FRANK

To develop a better understanding among young people about drugs, FRANK, the national drug information and advice service, created an automated MSN Bot specials.uk.msn.com/talktofrank, in Windows Live. It gave this younger demographic an opportunity to seek drugs advice 24/7 in a medium they were conversant in and happy to use. Some 32m questions have been posed.

Sofa So Good – Ikea

To raise awareness of a new store opening in Malmo, Sweden, Ikea set up a Facebook account for its Store Manager, Gordon Gustavsson.  Catalogue set images were uploaded onto his profile and the first person to tag themselves to an item in the image won the product – hundreds entered and it quickly went viral attracting thousands of fans for Mr Gustavsson and a nice social media campaign for the new store.

Keyboard-Lickin’ Good – BK

An early (2004) interactive online campaign which became a worldwide phenomenon is BK’s ‘subservient chicken’, launched to promote its ‘Tender Crisp Chicken Sandwich’.  Users find themselves looking at, what appears to be, a live webcam of a person dressed in a chicken costume.  Type in a command and the chicken responds. You can make it ‘pray’, ‘sneeze’, ‘hula hoop’ and, yes, you can even ‘choke the chicken’.

The site garnered 1m+ hits within the first 24 hours and has since surpassed 400m.  It was discussed in 63 US broadcasts and has gained global recognition. Read the history of the campaign.

Unwrapping Social Media – Virgin Blue

Australia’s Virgin Blue airline conducted the world’s biggest virtual game of pass the parcel to celebrate its ninth birthday.  Participants virtually unwrapped a 3D present to win prizes (they were awarded another layer to unwrap for each friend they shared the site with) and were redirected to low-cost ‘birthday’ prices after taking part.

Gimme Some Skin – E4

To promote the new characters in Skins series 3, TV channel E4 launched an innovative interactive trailer allowing viewers to navigate onto character video biogs once they have been introduced on screen.

Alongside this an MSN Bot was made available giving fans up-to-date episode commentary as it aired. The trailer attracted 125,000 views before the show launched, while 25,000 people downloaded the MSN Skins Messenger Bot. It won an NMA 2010 Effectiveness Award

Cheesy Stunt – Goldenpalace.com

GoldenPalace.com gets a mention for its sheer volume of goofy stunts – ranging from the one where they paid a woman to have the company logo tattooed on her forehead, to paying US $28,000 for a cheese toastie.  The latter was spun into a cheese toastie eating competition which was seeded online, in chat rooms and on social networking sites.

Rainbows Flying High – Radiohead

Radiohead’s seventh album, In Rainbows, was initially only available from the band’s website.  Not particularly clever in itself, but when the band announced in 2007 that fans could pay what they felt was appropriate for the album, a storm of (predominantly) positive publicity ensued as online chat rooms buzzed with news of the idea.  Not classic social media, but clever online stunt.

Gets The Tick of Approval – Nike

To build brand loyalty and raise awareness of its new ‘iPod Sports Kits’, the sports company launched a social networking site, Nike+ .  The Nike+ system tracks a runner’s performance via an iPod nano.   The community encourages users to compare their running routes and compete against each other.

Collectively, more than 400,000,000km have been notched up by users and a Nike+ organized race in 2008 attracted 800,000 runners.  Nike had sold over 1.3 million of its iPod Sports Kits.  The campaign is the recipient of a Cannes Cyber Lion Award.

Dude, Where’s My Followers? – Ashton Kutcher

This case study has been in and out of the Umpf list.  However, we felt it merits a place because the stunt – where Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN (top video) to see who could first gain one million Twitter followers – to a large extent popularised Twitter to the masses.  And $100,000 was donated to charidee.  And, as if you didn’t hear, Kutcher won (second vid).

Painting The Town Red, Green, Orange… – Sony Bravia

It is claimed that a strategic social media campaign , launched months before Sony Bravia’s now famous ‘Paint’ ad launched, attracted a cult following that laid the foundations for the success of the TV spot.  A dedicated blog, a blogger engagement programme, as well as an SEO campaign helped to drive 1.6 million visits to the site and 850,000 views of the ad on YouTube.  Enjoy a 91-second version of the ad:

Dell-ivering Social Media – Dell

When it comes to metrics, Dell’s December 2009 claim that $6.5 million of its revenue was a derivative of its various Twitter accounts (http://www.dell.co.uk/twitter) is pretty emphatic. Whilst it is difficult to provide evidence to dispute the claims, what is undeniable is that as a model for ‘getting it right’, it’s hard to knock as their approach shows.

Mitey Fine Work – Marmite

Marmite recruited a group of individuals (the ‘Marmarati’ marmarati.org) based on enthusiast blogs and online competitions, where entrants had to describe why they loved the brand. They were entrusted to trial a new, stronger marmite spread. As well as connecting personally with their biggest fans, the story gained national coverage and its latest edition, Marmite XO, was launched.

Whopping Great Big Social Media Idea – Burger King

In January 2009 Burger King created a Facebook app and offered users a free Whopper burger if they removed 10 online friends. Facebook was not impressed and shut down the app but by that point more than 200,000 friends had been ‘sacrificed’ and word had virally spread far and wide. Nice social media stunt.

Keel Over – Lynx

The male toiletry brand launched the ‘Keeping Keeley’ campaign in January 2010 using E4 Inbetweeners star Blake Harrison tries to gain the affection of glamour model, Keeley Hazell, with visitors to the website deciding upon the outcomes of the storyline.

Clicks and Morter – Rage Against The Machine

Jon and Tracy Morter’s social media campaign is well-deserving of a place in this Social Media Campaign Hall of Fame, not least because it prevented a truly insipid X-Factor song claiming the Christmas No1 single spot.  It is also one of the most successful examples of crowdsourced group ‘buycotting’.

The now famous Facebook-initiated campaign attracted 1m members, gained a huge amount of column inches and airtime and helped Rage Against The Machine grab a No 1 single (it also raised £100,000 for homeless charity Shelter).  Zack de la Rocha from RATM described it as an “incredible organic grassroots campaign”.

Do-Nut Pass Up a Facebook Campaign – Dunkin Donuts

To raise awareness of its latest ‘Vanilla Bean Coolatta’ product, Dunkin Donuts launched its ‘Keep it Coolatta’ Facebook campaign where fans could win prizes by setting their profile picture to one of them drinking a Coolatta.  Those who did – and they reached over 800,000 fans – were entered into a prize draw to win holiday flights.

Need a social media campaign to help your business?

China Cup – Adidas

As sponsor of both the Beijing Olympics 2008 and the Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team, Adidas wanted to enhance the sport’s flagging popularity in China.  They implemented a variety of social media tactics: blogs (161,000 impressions) were created to open communication between the team and its fans; images from a ‘glamour’ photoshoot were posted online gaining national press; various viral films (5.5m views within the first three months) were created repositioning the sport as fast-paced and exciting; and finally, a competition was set up to discover the ‘best chant’.

Buddy Holly-Day – TravBuddy.com

The online forum TravBuddy.com, a site designed to bring together travel enthusiasts, created a Facebook app where users can share holiday photos and experiences – it also calculates what percentage of the world they have visited.  Within six months 500,000 users had added their profiles with the app being used on average 10,000 times/day. Happily we can include this in the Umpf Social Media Campaign Hall of Fame enabling us to use our Sun-esque ‘Buddy Holly-Day’ headline.

Girl Talk – Procter & Gamble

P&G, the world’s biggest supplier of consumer goods, set up the BeingGirl.co.uk forum where teenage girls could talk about their transition into womanhood. Product promotion was limited, with the discussion board acting as a support mechanism rather than an advertising medium. P&G say that the social media tactic has been four-times more effective than its traditional approach to product marketing. The site receives over 2m visits per month.

I Know What You Did Last Summer – Vodafone

To reinforce appeal among young adults, the mobile phone network produced a drama series of 22 episodes, “Who Killed Summer?” (youtube.com/user/whokilledsummer09) following six young people travelling to different European music festivals. Twitter, Facebook and Flickr were used to promote the site wks09.com.

Eyeing-Up A Donation – eBay, PayPal & Miller Coors

To raise money for cancer charities, the three organisations launched the hashtag #BeatCancer, where for every tweet featuring the tag, a donation of one cent was given to cancer charities across the world. The campaign won the world record for the ‘distribution of the largest mass message through social media’ within 24 hours – 7m Tweets, raising $70,000 in the process.

Two’s Company, Tree’s A Crowd – Sony Ericsson

To position itself as a technological innovator, the mobile phone manufacturer developed a Twittering Tree which it showcased at the Mobile World Congress, 2010. Using electromagnetic field technology to sense human contact, it Tweeted relevant comments such as “I’m lonely” when people walked away.

Haiti Earthquake Disaster

Social media can be an impressive and indispensable tool for crisis communications, too – take the example of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti.  A campaign, made viral through Twitter and Facebook, raised $8m in just a few days solely through text messages.  While researchers in San Diego State University’s Immersive Visualization Center (Viz Lab), helped first-responders on the ground in Haiti.

A-Rated X Factor – ITV.com

Love it or hate it, there’s no getting away from The X Factor. And thanks to social media never was this more evident than in the 2009 series (bagging ITV and Talkback a Reolution award in the process). They ramped up social media activity around the brand (@TheXFactor has 66,000+ followers, thousands added the X Factor Twibbon, there are 1.4m Facebook fans and, during the shows, there are tens of thousands of comments on ITV.com’s chat function). During some shows, half of Twitter’s top trending global topics were X Factor related, at one stage accounting for 4.6% of all worldwide Tweets. As for boosting ITV.com’s ad impressions, a “significant amount of traffic is from Twitter and Facebook” according to Ben Ayers, head of social media/community at ITV.com.

Xperiencing Success –  Sony Ericsson

A heavyweight blogger relations strategy was key to this award-winning campaign for the global launch of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1.  Following a social media audit, a blogger resource centre was established to disseminate information among a tiered list of bloggers.  It also handed bloggers the ability to ‘co-create’ the campaign resulting in over 1.4 million mentions of Xperia across social media. Read more.

Simples, Yet Effective – CompareTheMarket.com

The social media elements of this multi-million pound, multi-channel marketing campaign have fuelled the brand recognition flames.  The much-loved meerkat has 40,000 followers (@Aleksandr_orlov), 750,000 Facebook fans and his videos (youtube.com/user/CompareTheMeerkat),  such as the ad outtakes, below, have been watched over 1m times.

Thirsty Work – Twestival

Twestival, the largest global grassroots social media fundraising initiative, raised $1.2m in 14 months for 137 non-profit organisations.  Its highly successful fundraising social media campaign in January 2009 was arranged in just one month.  Global festivals in 202 cities were organised via Twitter, recruiting 1,000 volunteers.  More than 10,000 people participated raising $250,000 – or the equivalent of 55 wells providing clean drinking water to 17,000 people in Uganda, Ethiopia and India. As well as online noise, the event gained mass media coverage on television as well as multiple newspapers including The Guardian and the New York Times.

The Many Faces Of Coke – Coke Zero

They say each and every one of us has a doppelganger somewhere in the world.  Coke Zero’s clever Facebook app aimed to find that person.   Grant the Coke Zero Facial Profiler app access to your Facebook account and, using image recognition software, it tries to match your Facebook pic with your look-a-like somewhere in the world.

Social Media Spice – Old Spice

Pre-2010 and post-sometime in the 80s, you wouldn’t be seen dead buying Old Spice, let alone splashing it on.  It’s a hideous, ropey old aftershave with a terrible image problem.  And then along came former Oakland Raiders and Cleveland Browns’ wide receiver Isaiah Mustafa wearing just a towel and Old Spice talking to us with impossibly cool inflection.  More than 180 personalised videos were created for specific bloggers, random people, industry commentators and, of course, followers on Twitter, all of whom fanned the self-perpetuating flames of video viralness.  It is said to be one of the fastest-growing online video campaigns of all time which the Wieden + Kennedy ad team behind it call a “new episodic content in real time.”  Whether it sells any more smelly stuff, only time will tell (indications are it’s had a small increase in sales).  At the very least, what social media has done is given the brand some much-needed credibility.  Old Spice? Cool? Who’d have thought that?

One of the original UK TV ads

Can We Tweet It? Yes We Can – Barack Obama

Barack Obama’s pre-election campaign had an all-embracing social media strategy.  Whilst his inauguration into office cannot be attributed solely to this, it was a significant, contributing factor. And there’s some impressive stats:

13m individuals on an emailing list receiving 7,000 variations of more than 1bn emails

3m online donors who contributed 6.5m times

5m friends on 15 different social networking sites

8.5m visits to MyBarackObama.com per month

2m profiles with 400,000 blog posts

35,000 volunteer groups that held 200,000 offline events

70,000 fundraising hubs, raising $30 million

Three million people signed up for the text messaging program, each receiving five to 20 messages per month

Three million phone calls within the last four days of the election

Stats sources: Monte Lutz; Edelman Obama inauguration speech word cloud courtesy of Richie Jones at Freshminds

Dew A Change – Mountain Dew

Launched in late 2007, the first DEWmocracy initiative – for PepsiCo-owned US drink Mountain Dew – opened product development to consumers, asking them to choose the next flavour, colour and name. 1m joined in and Voltage came to market in January 2009. Their latest campaign still harnesses the collective intelligence of the brand’s fans, and is still looking for a new product, but it’s been more social media focused (Facebook, Twitter, 12seconds.tv, YouTube, etc).  And the Crowdsourcing element has been wider, allowing the public to select not just the flavour, colour and name, but packaging design and ad campaign, too.  As well as the consumer website dewmocracy.com and social media channels, there’s a slick media centre dewmocracymediahub.com.

Fancy A Fcuk? – FCUK

FCUK was one of the first mainstream brands to dip its stick in the peep show of the social media scene: Chatroulette.  Its ‘The Man, The Woman’ campaign (“Rise above the sea of failing men and charm a woman on Chatroulette” to win some FCUK clobber) is certainly brave, sailing, as it was, into unchartered waters.  Ten out of ten for balls. Literally.

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What Started As A Social Media Wispa  – Wispa

Despite the uncertainty around whether this was fan-initiated or PR-driven, the Wispa comeback was a massive success for Cadbury on a meagre budget. No gorilla, no Phil Collins, just people power.  The story goes that fans launched a campaign – some 90+ separate ‘Bring Back Wispa’ groups and more than 13,000 signatures in online petitions – to bring back the discontinued bar and the chocolate men said yes.  Today, there are some 1.2m+ fans on the official page facebook.com/wispa.

Pink My Ride – Fiat 500

To promote its latest 500 model, Fiat signed up David Sheath to paint a white car pink using only nail varnish and a nail varnish brush. Viewers could watch the four-day task live at PinkMyRide.com and despite @500Pink attracting just 156 followers, news of the stunt spread quickly.

Practising Safer (Sus)Sex – Sussex Safer Roads Partnership (SSRP)

A simple yet brilliantly clever online video, supported through Facebook and Twitter channels, fronted this campaign, entitled ‘Embrace Life’, to promote seatbelt use.

Gillette, The Best A Vamp Can Get – HBO

Television network HBO uploaded a series of unusual vampire-specific ads for brands such as Mini, Ecko and Gillette to its Facebook, MySpace and YouTube channels to promote the second series of True Blood – a clever word-of-mouth ad campaign.

Nice, Nice Baby – Virgin Mobile

To promote V Festival in Australia, the publicity-shy company launched a social media campaign, rightmusicwrongs.org, where it uploaded videos of artistes such as Vanilla Ice apologising for their ‘crimes to music’. Users could then vote whether they should be forgiven or be held accountable.

Facing Up To Real Beauty – Dove

In 2006, Dove extended its globally celebrated and recognised ‘Real Women’ campaign with a word-of-mouse ad viral.  Its time-lapse video illustrated the airbrushing techniques used within traditional beauty industry campaigns. The 75 second video topped 11m views, grabbing global attention.

Roll vs Cole, You Decide – Sausage Roll Fans Unite

There’s clever social media campaigns and then there’s plain silly.  This example falls into the latter camp, but it really does show how a social media collective can form at great pace.  Even for a sausage roll.  This ‘campaign’ has one simple goal, to garner more fans than the Facebook fan page of the nation’s sweetheart, Cheryl Cole.  At the time of writing Cheryl (Girls Aloud band member, solo artist, X-Factor judge, Vogue cover star, Glamour Woman of the Year, face of L’Oréal) had 1.8m fans and the sausage roll (calories 240, fat 20g, carbs: 16g) had an impressive 1.13m.

A Sweet Social Media Campaign – Skittles

In March 2009 Skittles owned social media. Well, for about 24 hours. Their idea – to turn the skittles.com homepage into a user-generated stream of unfiltered Skittles mentions on social media channels such as Twitter – was brilliant in its originality. The page also integrated the brand’s Flickr, YouTube and Facebook pages. But, live by the unfiltered Tweet, die by the unfiltered Tweet – and soon normal service was established. The site still has a lot of social media interaction and kudos to Mars-owned Skittles for being brave with their concept.

Averting A Social Media Crisis – ASDA

After a damaging video was uploaded to YouTube showing a former ASDA member of staff breaking products and licking raw chicken, the supermarket was quick to react, using social media to protect its brand.  It responded in kind with its own YouTube-posted video which included interviews with the store manager and shocked staff.  Filmed on a Flip, the video response was turned round in hours. It was smart, social media thinking by the in-house team; the speed – not to mention means – of delivery ensuring that media coverage, forum threads, as well as word-of-mouth chatter was balanced, with the public largely sympathetic to the wronged supermarket.

Grab A Pizza The Social Media Action – Domino’s

As with ASDA, pizza giant Domino’s experienced a similar problem with a couple of employees uploading videos of themselves defacing pizzas (read and watch more). Within 48 hours the fast food chain had responded with a video of its own on its Facebook page. Again, as with the ASDA example, impact was minimised and online audiences were reassured of the brand’s dedication to quality.

Cadbury Brow-ser – Cadbury

To support its highly watchable ‘Eyebrows’ ad, the chocolate bar brand launched an MSN-based social media campaign. Open for eight hours, it offered participants the chance to become the face of Aglassandahalffullproductions.com (the wider campaign’s title); within this short space of time, Cadbury received 6,000 video submissions, reaching 70,000 individuals.

The Best (Social Media) Job In The World – Tourism Queensland

Ironically, it was a few carefully-placed press ads which launched one of the favourite social media campaigns of 2009. The publicity stunt offered a ‘job’ as an island caretaker in the Great Barrier Reef with a salary of AUD $150,000 for a six-month stint. It was a cold, wet and dreary January morning in the UK when the press picked up on the story. Applicants – 34,000 in total – had to create and upload a video of themselves. A shortlist was created and then a wildcard candidate was crowdsourced. Whether it was social media that created the buzz, or just the thought of living on a beautiful sun-drenched island, with nothing to do but blog, Tweet and upload pictures and videos, who can tell. Regardless, it was an inexpensive, clever idea.

You’ve reached the end of Umpf’s Social Media Campaign Hall of Fame please do share your feedback, below.

Need help with a social media campaign?

It’s always a privilege to support new brands as they launch, so we were delighted when Westfield Health, the UK’s leading provider of corporate health cover, chose us to assist in the PR launch of its new digital, consumer health insurance brand, Health365.

Health365 is transacted solely online, enabling people to set up cover in less than five minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse. Sounds simple. And it is. It’s a dynamic, stand-out brand and breaks the mould for an industry all too often associated with complex procedures and outmoded practice.

We love Health365 and can’t wait to start rolling out some social media campaigns in the coming months too. We’re sure you’ll share our enthusiasm for the brand once you’ve seen the video:

It’s time to admit it; we all love an edgy brand that has the ability to shock. Shock marketing tactics have produced some of the best-known and most successful campaigns of recent years, after all. Just look at how French Connection transformed their sales a decade ago with the launch of the FCUK brand. And who can forget Pot Noodle’s ‘Slag of all snacks’ campaign that proved too much to swallow for the ASA? (the campaign we mean, not the food).

Whilst the latter was swiftly removed from our screens, the legacy lived on and helped to cement the pot-based gourmet feast in our minds as a dirty little secret that we loved to indulge in once in a while. Not bad for brand affinity, we’d say.
So, what about when a much-loved and controversial brand takes it one step too far over social media? Exhibit A: Dr Pepper’s Facebook porn-storm.

We’ve been following with keen interest the wavering fortunes of Dr Pepper as life imitates art. Once their jingle rang out loud and clear ‘Dr Pepper, so misunderstood’. Now they really are misunderstood by their customers and worse still, they’re facing a barrage of criticism for posting pornographic messages on minors’ Facebook statuses.

The minors in question gave their social media status updates to the Coca-Cola-owned drinks behemoth (rather like selling one’s soul to the devil) in exchange for an infinitesimally small chance to win £1,000. Yes, you read correctly. The largest drinks company in the world agreed to post embarrassing statuses on these unsuspecting youths’ Facebook pages, but it all turned sour when one 14-year-old girl had references to a notorious hard-core porn flick posted on her status.

Parents of said youngster enraged, cue Mumsnet (more influential than Delia, Oprah and Martha Stewart rolled into one) stepping in to defend the rights of the poor and needy. Then cue Coca-Cola running, screaming, for the hills, with the latest admission that they committed commercial Hara-kiri with an ‘uninformed approval’ of the social media campaign.

This is worse than admitting they sanctioned the campaign in full knowledge of what it would entail. Now they not only look grossly inappropriate but ignorant to boot. Still, we’re sure that the Atlanta-based company will live to fight another day. That’s the thing about shock marketing campaigns, whether over social media or not; it’s the shock that counts and unwittingly or not, Coca-Cola have certainly achieved that.

The ‘Dr Pepper porn-storm’ will go down as a rather ill-conceived example of a shock Facebook campaign. We know it’s not the first and it certainly won’t be the last. Brands need to be careful when trying to engage over with customers over Facebook. Coca-Cola is big enough to take the hit, but a consumer back-lash for a smaller company could spell the end in a Gerald Ratner-style blaze of dis-glory.

Facebook certainly isn’t the panacea most marketeers hoped it would be. Campaigns need just as much thought, if not more, before launching on a social media platform and even if you are the biggest drinks company in the world, you can still run into difficulty. A cautionary tale, indeed.

Each month, Communicate magazine poses a crisis management situation from a historical event and asks agencies for modern say solutions. This month it’s World Cup-themed and we’re rewinding back to 1986 and England’s World Cup quarter-final with Argentina and ‘that’ handball incident…

“Diego Maradona scores the decisive goal with a clear hand ball. England are outraged. With video evidence irrefutable, what advice would you give to Diego to protect his brand, retain his commercial endorsements, and calm the diplomatic crisis?”

Umpf’s response (full article here):

Only ‘sorry’, humility, humour and social media can save brand Maradona.

Because of his outrageous behaviour, first must come a personal apology from Maradona to every man, woman and child in England.

We’d film an apology for an online video. Enter a friend’s name, email and their photo, hit send and they receive a link to a bespoke video showing Maradona personally apologising by holding up a photo of the friend. Spreading virally, Maradona would be seen to be offering personal apologies across the land.

Next, the humour. First, a quick commercial tie-up with a Bluetooth headset company so Maradona can go ‘hands-free’ without losing any more friends.

Second, a short online video for brand Maradona showing what would have happened if his handball had not gone in the net. This time Shilton saves it and England go on to win the World Cup. Back home, Argentina revolts and Maradona becomes reviled.

In the final shot of the film we see Maradona, a broken man, begging on the streets of Buenos Aires. The camera zooms out to show Maradona begging with a friend – fellow handball ‘goal thief’ Thierry Henry.

Hosted on Maradona’s YouTube Channel, and launched through his Twitter feed, the video would demonstrate humility, humour and social media savoir-faire.

Umpf client &Co is the new name for Audiences Yorkshire, the oldest audience development agency in the UK.

We’ve been proud to be part of the new rebrand, working with the in-house team and their design consultancy, Wonder Associates, who designed the new logo, visual identity, as well website andco.uk.com.

The official launch at Aspire, Leeds was attended by guests from across the country and included key arts professionals, representatives of other audience development agencies, as well as &Co clients who are among the best-known cultural organisations and venues across Yorkshire and beyond.

We’re sure this is the start of a bright new chapter for the organisation, which supports businesses in the arts, cultural and leisure sectors.

We’re delighted to be working with new client Glen Rossie, one of the oldest whisky brands in the world.

It’s being given something of a brand overhaul with a new label, new bottle and a new chairman – Francis Rossi, frontman of rock band Status Quo (insert your own Scotch on the rocks pun).

The new bottle and logo is pretty neat with a plectrum-inspired label.

When we heard that just 50 first-run, signed and numbered limited edition bottles were being produced to re-launch the whisky, we arranged for bottle No 10 to be biked to David Cameron, as a housewarming gift for his new residence at No 10 Downing Street.

In our PR stunt, we added that we hoped the gift would help to maintain the political status quo in the new government.

With Dave owning bottle No 10 and bottle No 1 fetching £7,000 at charity auction, they’re becoming something of a collector’s item and we’ve got 30 of the 50 special, limited edition bottles up for grabs at www.glenrossiewhisky.com

At one time or another most people, while casually chatting with their mates, have called their boss a berk.  Or worse.

With social networks playing a key role in our lives, more and more people are having those conversations online now, and on Facebook it’s rife.

The trouble (for employees) is, thanks to last December’s changes in Facebook privacy settings many of the cat-calls are not being conducted privately, one-to-one, but one-to-many.  In fact, one-to-everyone.

To see what people are saying about their bosses, go to http://youropenbook.org type “boss ar*e” (no quotes, no asterisk).  It ranges from funny, sad to vitriolic.  And it may just cost you your job.

Job satisfaction rating?

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands

Research from www.MyJobGroup.co.uk [client] today shows 40% of UK employees criticise their workplace on social networking and micro-blogging sites like Facebook and Twitter, with one in five admitting to lambasting their bosses.

Nearly 60% of the 1,000 UK workers polled confessed they would change what they wrote on their social networking profile if they knew their employer was reading it – yet those recent Facebook privacy settings changes mean many employers could already be checking up on staff.

The striking stat was that 55% of workers believe fellow staff should face disciplinary action for criticising their workplace on social networking sites.

Most staff had little or no awareness of the legal implications of their online jibes and 70 per cent had no idea if their company had an HR or disciplinary policy in place to tackle online criticism; only 16 per cent knew for certain their company was equipped to deal with such issues.

Lee Fayer, Managing Director of MyJobGroup.co.uk, which operates the UK’s largest network of regional job boards, said: “There is no doubt that social networks are seen as an environment where employees feel comfortable criticising their workplace and there is scant regard for how serious these taunts could be.

“Open Facebook accounts and Tweets are effectively online publishing channels and each has the potential to damage companies’ and individuals’ reputations, so staff should be careful of off-the-cuff criticism, no matter how funny it may seem at the time.

“As an employee, if you were to openly criticise or defame your workplace in a newspaper or within a printed flyer, you’d expect legal consequences – they should expect the same of online outbursts.

Fergal Dowling, an employment law specialist at Irwin Mitchell Solicitors, said: “Abuse of social media can be grounds for discipline, up to and including termination of contract, depending on the level of abuse, and the policies in place at the company.

“Employees need to be increasingly aware and careful about what they write online as proved by the conviction of a man who tweeted what he thought was a joke about an airport bomb.

“Employers and HR departments need to be upfront and honest with their employees about their policies. Many firms may ban social media altogether but in some industries that is simply not viable, and some creative industries rely on social media.

“The important thing is to make sure that everyone knows what the clear boundaries should any need for discipline occur.

“Businesses should consider adding new terms to their policies dealing with specific issues such as restrictions on disclosing company information, rules governing any mentions of the company and any concerns about work issues should be dealt with internally rather than blogging or posting about problems on Facebook.”

Google Canoodle: Google River View

As a PR agency, if you can’t indulge in some self-promotion on April Fool’s day, then when can you?  So we did. Read the full story.

Umpf came up with the idea that Google Street View was piloting a hybrid version called Google River View which would map the waterways of Great Britain.  Leeds, we said, was being used as trial for the service ahead of a national roll-out in time for the London 2012 Olympics.

We worked with our friends over at The Guardian who were in on our canoe April Fool story ‘Google Canoodle’.

The link URL apart (http://www.guardian.co.uk/leeds/2010/mar/31/leeds-google-canoodle-waterways-pilot-april-fool), there was one major clue pointing to an April Fool’s gag.  Nobody picked up that the canoe would be “using sail pro-flo image capturing technology” – ‘sail pro-flo’ being an anagram of ‘April Fools’.

We mocked up an image of what Google River View might look like and the story was issued on Twitter.  TechCrunch gave the PR stunt a B+ for creativity and although they saw through our ruse, British Waterways thought it was a good idea.

Incidentally, inspiration for our idea came from the Google Street View snowmobile used to map the slopes of the recent Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Brown & Cameron: social media buddies? Source: Telegraph.co.uk

With social media becoming an increasingly popular tool, it seemed inevitable that 2010’s general election would see parties employing some elements within campaign strategy; however the degree to which it has been embraced by each candidate could not have been anticipated, resulting in it being dubbed: “the first word-of-mouth election”.

In run up to this year’s general election, tech-savvy politicians can be seen unashamedly flexing their weight of knowledge in this latest communication tool, across the worldwide web.

Labour has pre-emptively armed party members with new-media training, ensuring a smooth execution of this newest tactic; and with daily online video podcasts from senior campaign politicians, as well as real-time Twitter feedback, it is not surprising that such rigorous preparation has been undertaken.

Alongside this, Labour has cleverly optimised traffic to its own website using Google Adwords, resulting in constituents who are searching hot debate topics – such as: the economy, education and employment – are driven here primarily, receiving Labour’s take on the subject first.

While the Conservative party, not wanting to disappoint, have released an iPhone app, where users can receive a continuous flow  of up-to-date news on campaign progress, as well as takes on legislation, public policy and party memorandums.

Modern day constituents are demanding more transparency from MPs, social media offers a platform to achieve this. If these latest campaigns are anything to go by, it would appear that politicians are beginning to recognise and appreciate social media as a credible and effective communication channel, key to winning any election.

- Lydia Cambata

NB. Umpf has no affiliation to any political party, with the above comments regarding social media, rather than the efficiencies of one party’s campaign over another.

The Umpf blog has been a bit neglected of late (setting up a new agency can be time consuming) and I’ve been meaning to write something interesting for a while. So just when I was looking for an excuse, Nike served one up.  Swoosh.

This week, their football Tweets @NikeFootball (5,000+ Followers) started using a bit.ly vanity URL http://bit.ly/writehistorylive.  As you’ll see it takes you to an app on their Facebook Fan page (almost a third of a million fans).

If you’re new to URL shorteners such as bit.ly and is.gd (and there are hundreds of services out there), they take a long URL like http://www.facebook.com/nikefootball?v=app_10442206389&ref=ts (which eats up 61 of your 140-chracter Tweet) and shortens it to something like http://bit.ly/9HQmpy (20 characters). Both direct users to exactly the same place.

So rather than use a short bit.ly link, typically http://bit.ly/ [and then a randomly allocated  set of six alphanumeric characters with letters in upper and lower case], Nike has gone for a vanity title ‘writehistorylive’ to increase social media campaign recognition.

At the time of writing they’d had more than 6,500 clicks on their bit.ly vanity URL.  But see what happens when you click http://bit.ly/Writehistorylive or http://bit.ly/WriteHistoryLive.  The URL is subtly different – you probably wouldn’t even notice if it wasn’t pointed out – but the end result is, of course, not a Nike-endorsed site.  And imagine if there was some darker skulduggery eg http://bit.ly/writehistoryLive.

We’ve been advising clients recently on shortened vanity URLs.  One of our recommendations is, if you’re going to use a shortened vanity URL – as opposed to the shortened URL you’re allocated – ensure you secure any obvious alternative spellings, and the basic variations on capital letters.

Clearly, in Nike’s case there are millions of permutations in the use of upper and lower case with a long phrase such as writehistorylive (wRiTEhistorylive, WRITEhistoryliveE, etc etc ), but at least go for the basics: ALLCAPS, CapOnEachNewWord, alllowercase, Capfirstletter.

Of course, the counter argument is that the vanity shortened URL is typically only ever a social media link, so the reader will click straight through and, hence, there’s no need to worry.  But if a phrase is central to a campaign – as I would argue writehistorylive is (why create it in the first place?) – then there’s a credible argument to say the URL could be passed on verbally.

It’s probably only a matter of time before we see an intellectual property court case sparked by a shortened vanity URL.

NB: Neither bit.ly, is.gd, Nike (clearly!) nor Adidas are clients of Umpf and all example shortened vanity URLs have been created to demonstrate a point rather than to pass off a brand or marketing campaign.

So the Wall Street Journal has said it will no longer adhere to press release embargoes.  So what?  This really shouldn’t come as any shock to PR folk; it’s nothing new.

Back in 2008 TechCrunch, one of the most popular and influential IT blogs, publicly said it would deliberately break every embargo it was given by PR agencies.  It’s an interesting read which

you can see here.

Publishing is ever more a cut-throat business as the need to be first with the big online stories becomes greater.  Being first with an online news story means you stand to gain more click-throughs – and more click-throughs means your website is more valuable to an advertiser.  Plus, being first with a story means your site ranks higher in the search engines.  Which attracts more traffic.

What’s worse for the likes of the WSJ is that as well as their contemporaries in the print news world, they’re also competing online with the likes of bloggers, gossip sites and even citizen journalists.

So when TechCrunch doesn’t stick to the embargo, they’re more likely to be first with the tech news ahead of, say, Katie Boehret (@kabster728),  a technology reporter on the Wall Street Journal.  So you can see what the WSJ is thinking.

And while you’re thinking about the plight of the news print publishers, add this into the mix: who scooped the biggest story of the year (some might say ‘decade’)?  The Sunday Times? The Wall Street Journal? The New York Times? The BBC? Sky? CNN? Fox News? The Sun? News of the World? No, Michael Jackson’s death was reported first by a four-year-old celebrity gossip site called TMZ.com.

So, back to embargoes.  Should we be worried?  Well, it’s almost 20 months since TechCrunch said it would break every embargo it was given, yet today if you’re a technology PR consultant, TechCrunch is still going to be one of the first telephone calls you make when you’ve got a good story.

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There’s a common misconception that public relations is a fairly recent innovation.  True enough, in the 20^th Century Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays popularised the discipline we recognise today as PR.

However, just like Australia and the US, they existed long before they were ‘discovered’.

Although PR cannot lay claim to be the world’s oldest profession (recognised practitioners would have been few and far between back then), PR and word-of-mouth marketing has been around longer than you might imagine.

A quick example.  There are well over one hundred castles in Ireland, but how many can you name? You’d be hard pressed to name more than a couple.  However, you’re probably familiar with the castle at Blarney, if only because of its world famous Blarney Stone.

Millions have puckered up to kiss the Blarney Stone, including Mick Jagger, Winston Churchill, Laurel and Hardy and even Homer Simpson.

The belief is if you kiss the stone you’ll receive the gift of eloquence.  Exactly when the tradition started remains unclear, though it’s thought to date back between the 16^th and 18^th Century.  What’s certain is that the tale was passed from one person to several more, who then passed on the story themselves.   Today, more than 400,000 people turn up each year to kiss the Blarney Stone and I imagine Blarney Castle does not spend much at all on publicising itself.

Think also about the Trevi Fountain in Rome.  Throw in a coin and you’re assured a return to Rome they say.  I’ve been and indeed deposited a few euros.  And when I returned home people asked if I’d thrown a coin into the fountain.  Now I’d call that a very clever word-of-mouth destination marketing campaign.

Can Umpf really call itself a creative agency?  The problem is that we’re short of something here at Umpf Towers.

Although we’ve got some really cool offices – we’re in an old rope-making factory so we’ve got the exposed brick walls, original beams and we’re located on the trendy Calls, the city centre’s self-styled digital and creative hub – we’re missing something on the interior design front.

You see, we’ve we don’t yet have a helter skelter, a caravan, or a fairground carousel.  Shucks, there’s not even a pool table, retro arcade game or skateboard hanging round.

Maybe you work for a company with something interesting in the office.  If so, tell us what it is.  And if you’ve got any suggestions for the Umpf office space, let us know and we’ll try and sort it.  Ideally it’ll be something utterly useless.  Thanks.