by David Pickering of Eclipse Marketing

Why should companies be sitting up a paying attention to social networking? Essentially, the new generation of web 2.0 communities is providing new ways for people to share experiences, and forge and maintain relationships. What organisation can afford to miss out on opportunities to engage with consumers in fresh and exciting ways, as well as find out what they are saying about its brands?

If anyone is in any doubt about the power of social networks, let the statistics speak for themselves. Around 1.5 billion people in the world today have access to the Internet. A recent report on European online consumers found that around 60% of users take part in social networking activities of one kind or another and interact with online communities. This might be reading or writing blogs, listening to podcasts, setting up RSS feeds, or reading and writing online customer reviews.

In 30 elegant seconds, Vauxhall’s ecoFLEX ads get the message across. Children all over the world are shown playing with toy cars. The narrator introduces the EcoFLEX initiative that gives incentives to owners who decide to swap to the new, fuel-efficient, low-polluting Vauxhalls. The Louis Armstrong music adds just the right amount of emotion. The tagline ‘Because of them. Because of this.’ says it all. Simple. Memorable. And we get the point. See video clip.

by Michael Murphy, CEO Friends Reunited
Throughout my time in business, I’ve learnt that small changes can have a big effect. Recently on Friends Reunited we had a perfect example of that. One of my younger more learned colleagues described it as the Butterfly Effect, and, no, he wasn’t a designer talking about pretty shapes or colours. For those like me who don’t spend a lot of time in the mind, body, spirit section of Waterstones, the Butterfly Effect is the idea that if a butterfly beats its wings on one side of the planet, by the time the ripples reach the other hemisphere it’s turned into an earthquake.