Do all brands have to be human in their communications?

My mate Rob tweeted a spectacularly cold and impersonal text message from his insurance company the other day, asking quite understandably where the ‘humanity’ was in this particular brand.

One of the replies we got (after my retweet) was as follows

As a believer in companies having a strong tone and voice, Oliver’s reply made me stop and think. Obviously, insurance isn’t a sexy or even particularly personal industry, but does that absolve those sorts of companies from being ‘human’ in their communications? Continue reading “Do all brands have to be human in their communications?”

The secret behind contagious content

I took part at an event organised by PR Moment around the concept of ‘contagious content‘ (or viral marketing) on Wednesday.

What motivates popularity, shareability and is it actually worth it?

Big data

Anna Salter from Kantar Media provided the data, neatly summed up in a handy acronym that defines the perfect storm of viral marketing: REACH – Relevance; Emotion; Ambience; Currency; Handiness.

If you tick these 5 boxes, then you’re in with a chance of a hit.

Continue reading “The secret behind contagious content”

What I’ve read this week… 21st Feb 2013

I’ve realised I read such a lot of interesting stuff every week that I want to document it.

Here’s the first in a hopefully-fairly regular series of weekly round-ups.

Enjoy 🙂

1) Big Data? Meh!

The wonderful Stowe Boyd is a great person to follow on Twitter and his take on 2013’s buzzword, ie Big Data is more than a little interesting.
Read Stowe’s view on Big Data

2. Fair comment?

It’s fair to say that comments and commenters have becomes something of a challenge for lots of sites. However, rather than limit their scope, some sites are going further, including Gawker’s Nick Denton.
How to do something different with comments
(Thanks to Will McInnes from the rather good NixonMcInnes for this link.)
Continue reading “What I’ve read this week… 21st Feb 2013”