After helping Bulmers cider launch two new flavours earlier this year on Facebook and Twitter, we’re back with a brand new campaign. This time, with #beginwithabulmers, we’re enabling Bulmers drinkers to share their experiences of getting great times started with a Bulmers in return for rewards all summer long.

This is the biggest multi-channel marketing campaign in Bulmers’ history and we, along with Bulmers’ other agencies, have been working closely and collaboratively to make it happen.

The campaign revolves around the #beginwithabulmers app, which is now live on the Bulmers Facebook page and will act as a hub for all of Bulmers activity this summer.

It allows people to share their ‘good times that begin with a bottle of Bulmers’ and we’ll be collecting all mentions of the #beginwithabulmers hashtag on Facebook and Twitter, whatever the weather, to contribute to an overall ‘social volume’ tracked by the app.

Think about it as a Blue Peter totaliser fuelled by great experiences with your friends – whenever you share a good time that begins with a Bulmers, we’ll be on hand to collect it and contribute it to milestones in mentions which unlock prize giveaways, giving you the opportunity to win tickets to events, Bulmers products and exclusive merchandise.

From this week, our work will be going out with the help of XFM, Clear Channel and CBS to deliver this unique real time promotion, using digital outdoor displays to show the best of our entries in real-time across major UK cities. Not only this, but XFM presenter Jon Holmes will be producing a guide to what listeners are up to every Friday evening based on tweets to the campaign.

Get involved by visiting our app at Bulmers on Facebook or tweet using #beginwithabulmers. We’re over at @bulmerscider if you want to drop by for more info and see how the campaign is getting on too.

Here’s to us beginning the first of many great summer moments with a Bulmers – cheers!

Facebook report Q1 earnings & increase in monthly active users
Facebook has reported its earnings for Q1 2013, announcing revenue of $1.45bn, up 38% from Q1 2012. 85% of total revenue came from advertising, amounting to $1.25bn, up 43% from Q1 2012.

The network simultaneously noted an increase in Monthly Active Users (MAUs). While growth slowed down in markets like the US, Canada and Europe, MAUs were up from 901 million in Q1 2012 to 1.1bn a year later, while Daily Active Users (DAUs) increased from 526 million to 665 million in the same period.

A great deal of this growth was down to mobile. Q1 2013 saw 751 million mobile MAUs compared to 488 million the year before, while there are now 189 million Mobile Only MAUs.

Twitter appoints Cynthia Gaylor as head of corporate development
Twitter has fuelled rumours of plans for an IPO with the appointment of ex-Morgan Stanley investment banker Cynthia Gaylor, who worked on the public offerings of Facebook, LinkedIn and Zynga. In what was her first ever tweet, she said:

@amac @twitter @jess look forward to joining and focusing on M&A + strategy. pointed north … let the migration begin!

— cynthia gaylor (@cynthiag) May 2, 2013

Twitter was valued at $9bn after an offer to staff in January and is set to hit global ad revenue of $1bn by 2014. This, along with the above appointment, has led to speculation by The New York Times that “next big step is to go public on the stock market, and insiders say the current goal is to have an initial public offering in 2014″.

Twitter ads now available to all US users
Twitter’s self-serve ads interface, launched in March 2012, is now available to all US users. Previously accessible only by invite, Twitter has used the period to improve on a number of features, from targeting to reporting, and decided to open the self-serve platform to everyone in the US. All you need to do to gain access is visit the page at business.twitter.com and answer a few questions. There has been concern that the increased demand will lead to either a boost in the number of ads appearing in users’ streams, or the price of ads. Russ Laraway, senior director of small- and medium-sized business at Twitter, has stated that “There will be no change in the frequency with which ads show up in timelines”, though it is not clear how price will be affected.

‘Photos of You’ on Instagram
Instagram has launched ‘Photos of You’, which essentially allows Facebook-style tagging of people and brands in photos. Previously, users would @-mention one another, as if on Twitter, to perform a similar function. This form of tagging comes with another key feature: it makes a full archive of all photos someone has been tagged in that appear on that user’s profile, assuming they have given permission. To prevent privacy complaints, Instagram has built controls that allow manual selection of which photos are visible to others. The feature looks to foster increased communication between individuals, but may also be beneficial for brands to interact with each other, as well as influencers with high follower counts and normal users.

Twitter updates Vine for iOS
Twitter has produced a couple of updates for the Vine iOS app, including the ability to shoot with the front-facing camera and tag others in posts. Where it was previously only possible to shoot with the camera on the back of the phone, the screenshot below displays a small button in the bottom left of the screen that allows switching between cameras. You can also see that @-mentioning is set to work much like on Twitter, Vine’s parent platform.

Path exceeds 10 million users
Path, the social network that limits you to 150 friends, has exceeded 10 million users for the first time. After reaching 2 million in Feb 2012 and 3 million in June 2012, the figure sees a large milestone for the platform. They’ve since added a search feature in December and released version 3.0 in March this year, which supported messaging. While the number of registered users is an impressive start for Path, it will be interesting to examine how many active users they manage to retain.

Where does brands’ Pinterest engagement come from?
According to a study by Digitas and Curalate, 30% of engagement on Pinterest comes from brand accounts. The remaining 70% comes from users pinning content from outside of brands’ Pinterest accounts.

J.C. Penney asks fans to come back on social media
Last year, J.C. Penney decided to get rid of sales and coupons, focussing instead on regular, low prices. The move was a disaster and they’ve recently taken to social media in an attempt to remedy it. They took to Twitter with the hashtag #jcplistens, whereby fans were asked which changes should be kept and which reversed. The move is a nice example of a brand using social media honestly, in an attempt to connect with fans. It will be interesting to see if it helps their ailing figures.

Mountain Dew purchases promoted tweets for apology
Another example of a big brand mistake was Mountain Dew’s ‘Felicia the Goat’ advert, which was criticised as both racist and misogynistic. Last week, they purchased promoted tweets to expand the reach of their apology, letting users know that they had pulled the advert. It’s an interesting idea: on the one hand, it allows the apology to be seen by as many people as possible. However, it also provides potentially unnecessary promotion to the original issue.

Lowe’s post six-second tips on Vine
Lots of brands are using Vine. Some are doing it well, some aren’t. Hardware store Lowe’s has strongly entered the former camp with their latest campaign, using Vine to post six-second home improvement tips. The medium brings to life content that is relevant but not necessarily exciting, while the tips themselves are useful, not an unnecessary experiment with a new medium. As such, the form and content compliment one another perfectly.

Stripped screw? No problem, just use a rubber band. #lowesfixinsix #howto vine.co/v/bU61aqq2YOp

— Lowe’s (@Lowes) April 21, 2013

Any sticker peels right off when you use a hair dryer. #lowesfixinsix #tip #stopmotion vine.co/v/bPH2WPpnA7r

— Lowe’s (@Lowes) April 24, 2013

Red Bull’s ‘Imaginate’ Pinterest puzzles
Red Bull is asking fans to solve Pinterest puzzles based on stunts performed by trials cyclist Danny MacAskill. Six videos will be released, each showing a different trick, which fans must watch in order to solve a puzzle on Pinterest. This involves pinning content in the correct order to create an image of MacAskill. Those who do so correctly will be entered into a draw to win signed photos of the cyclist.

Hugh Jackman answers Wolverine questions
To promote the upcoming release of ‘The Wolverine’, in which he plays the title character, Hugh Jackman answered the Twitter questions of 11 fans in a series of YouTube videos. He also tweeted the answers and posted links to the videos from his official @RealHughJackman account. This is the latest in a series of social stunts around the film, including a 6-second ‘Tweaser’ released through Twitter’s Vine app.

Power out? No problem. twitter.com/Oreo/status/29…

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

A power-cut and a small unassuming black and white chocolate biscuit has created an appetite from brands to rethink their approach to social media and to attempt jump onto the ‘strategic improvisation’ bandwagon. All brands are now thinking about how they can have an instantaneous social hit like Oreo produced at the Super Bowl.

For this reason, having a star appearance of B. Bonin Bough, Vice President of Global Media and Consumer Engagement at Mondelēz International at the FT Digital Media conference to share the behind the scenes story was reason enough for any social media specialist to attend. The event attracted high level speakers such as Jeff Bewkes, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Time Warner, Dr. Thomas Rabe, Chairman and CEO, Bertelsmann and Sir Martin Sorrell, Group Chief Executive, WPP and my expectation was a well thought out, varied and generally free of marketing BS conference – I wasn’t disappointed.

A recurrent theme at social media conferences recently has been the importance of brand’s social media content feeling “native” to whichever social platform it is on. As Hearsay Social’s Clara Shih says, “the future of advertising won’t feel like advertising”. So, it was fascinating to hear first hand the story behind what Fast Company call the “tweet that was heard around the world”.

Bough recalls that the reason the Dunk in the Dark (DITD) tweet ever happened came from a desire in Mondelez to be Best in Class in social, this is a phrase we hear a lot a We Are Social. We’re regularly briefed to deliver this but few brands have the DNA, resource or the patience to get there.

The revealing thing about Bough’s presentation was that to a lot of people DITD would appear to be an instantaneous success. The reality was that DITD was the result of a long line experiments, or indeed twists.

Bough explained that from the outside Oreo’s Daily Twist was a truly social brand churning out quality social content but behind the scenes it was an experiment in not only coming up with reactive creative content but also an experiment in how to get work signed off fast. Bough described the daily twist as an exercise in “building muscle memory” in its brand managers which would allow them to produce top quality content quickly.

The Oreo team had set up a war room at the Super Bowl preparing themselves to produce  opportunist content. DITD wasn’t the first reactive post and there were other reactive tweets such as this one which didn’t have the same impact…

But then the lights went out and the rest is social media history.

Since DITD, Bough has pushed ‘strategic improvisation’ one step forward. The music channel Fuse, Trident and Twitter have teamed up for a revolutionary approach to TV programming with “Trending 10”.

The show is built around real-time Twitter conversation spikes and 10 nightly stories will be compiled from Fuse’s Heat Tracker, a proprietary tool built off Twitter’s API that monitors the most-talked about music discussions of the day at Fuse.tv/T10. Interestingly the approach is to look for spikes in conversation – as opposed to the largest amount of conversation.

Bonin knows he has to make this work “If I lose reach, I lose sales” and that Oreo’s successful work in social delivers 2-3x the effectiveness of TV spot.

If brands want to win at ‘strategic improvisation’ they need to have the set up and structure to deliver this. If its going to feel native, be shareable and be turned round quick you’d best be prepared to take time to get it right.

Tom Smith, founder of GlobalWebIndex, exclusively talks us through their latest research into social media usage around the world.

We’ve been talking about the power of mobile for a long time. And there’s been much excitement in various markets around the world as we hit the inflection point of mobile becoming a more significant source of internet access than PC.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when our latest data shows that active use of Facebook, Google+ and Twitter is now being driven by the smart and feature phones that we all now carry with us.

The numbers are quite phenomenal, with iPhone users in Russia for example 51% more likely to be active participants on Facebook than the average Russian internet user. In Poland iPhone users were 211% more likely to be using Twitter and in Japan they were 133% more likely to be using Google+.

Android users were also significantly more active than average.

Our ninth survey of global internet usage in 31 countries also shows that the big are becoming bigger. Facebook, Google+ and Twitter continue to grow at the expense of local platforms outside of Greater China and Russia.

But for those in search of the rising stars of social media, it’s worth keeping an eye on Russia’s vKontakte – up 40% in the nine months to the end of Q1 2013, and just behind Twitter (which is up 44%). Another name worth watching is Taiwan’s Eyny, which is up 34% over the same period and just a percentage point behind social media’s biggest name Facebook.

As you may have read in Campaign or The Drum, Graham Jenks and James Nester have joined us as our new Creative Directors in London. James and Graham’s 2012 campaign ‘The Gnome Experiment’ was the only UK campaign to win both Direct and Digital awards at the Cannes Lions in 2012. It was also the world’s most awarded direct campaign of the year in the 2012 Big Won report, where the pair were also named the UK’s top creative team and 4th in the world. Here’s why they’re proud to be social…

We Are Social is already the world’s most respected specialist social media agency. Now it’s time to become one of the world’s most creative agencies.

Graham and I joined because we believe we have everything here to achieve that; the clients, the expertise, the passion, the coffee machine.

Great advertising has always been socially shared: Orange Tango Man and Bud’s ‘Wazzup?!’ were both brilliant memes.

But the wall has fallen. Never before have brands and consumers shared such an intimate two-way relationship.

Brands are the same as the rest of us. They want people to like, respect and be loyal to them. We’ve all been alive long enough to know real relationships are won on an emotional level. And we now have exciting new tools available to us to generate real affection.

For us, working with the team here at We Are Social, the opportunity is enormous: to use social thinking to redefine marketing.

We’re up for it.

Deloitte have just released their 2013 UK Media Consumer survey which “provides a ‘reality check’ on how UK consumers, across the generations, interact with media and what their preferences might be in the future”.

As the full report points out:

It seems that there is a digital divide in the online population between the over 25s who are “search-first” in their Internet usage and the under 24s, who are “social first”. If this is the case, there are profound implications for the business models of those companies that advertise online.

The infographic below highlights this and the other key findings from the report:

New layout for pages on Facebook mobile
Facebook has updated the way pages appear on mobile, citing a number of benefits for users and page owners. For the former, they note a ‘cleaner, simpler look’, with relevant information, such as photos and location, positioned alongside interaction buttons at the top of the page. These seem to constitute benefits for page owners too, who will look to benefit from higher engagement as a result of the changes. As well as this, they’re set to be provided with the ability to pin important posts and a streamlined management tool. To see how the changes will appear for different users, see the image below:

Twitter testing two-factor authentication
Twitter has begun testing two-factor authentication, in a move that looks to prevent a continuation of the high-profile hackings that have happened recently. From the Associated Press to FIFA president Sepp Blatter, a number of large, verified accounts have been taken over, posting strange and often embarrassing content. Whilst two-factor authentication would be unlikely to be rolled out universally, for the sake of avoiding hassle on smaller, personal accounts, it would likely be a welcome move for brands and public figures. Google and Facebook both already offer a similar system.

LinkedIn launch ‘Contacts’
LinkedIn have introduced a new service called ‘Contacts’. Essentially, it takes details of contacts from various areas of your phone or computer, including email accounts, calendars and address books and compiles them in one place, allowing you to interact with people more easily and maintain important relationships. The service will be launched both on the LinkedIn platform and as a standalone mobile app. The full details are contained in the following slides:

Tumblr introduce in-steam mobile ads
For the first time, Tumblr will include ads on mobile that look like normal posts. Previously, adverts only appeared in “Radar”, where now mobile users will see up to 4 ads per day in the home stream. With collaborators including GE, Warner Bros and ABC, Tumblr are really set to bulk up their advertising revenue, but claim to be devoted to maintaining the current Tumblr experience. Head of sales Lee Brown has stated that:

This mobile advertising opportunity is native to how our consumers experience content on our apps; as a continuous stream.

Advertised posts will be differentiated from others with a $ symbol. Tumblr have stated that, ultimately, the move will expand to desktop, but there is no timeframe given as yet.

Budweiser’s ‘buddy cup’ app
Budweiser’s new campaign looks to play on the emotional connection created by touching cups during a shared beer. Their new ‘buddy cups’ link to Facebook, so that you can become friends with someone on the network by tapping cups with one another. Now when you drunkenly agree to add someone on Facebook, you won’t have until the morning to change your mind.

Nike PHOTOiD and Instagram
For the past few years, Nike iD has allowed create their own, customised clothing from a range of colours. Now, the sportswear brand is taking it one step further, linking with Instagram to launch ‘PHOTOiD’, a tool that designs clothing based on the colours of your favourite Instagram photos. It’s certainly a novel idea and it will be interesting to see the extent to which people are willing to use a system like this. Here are some examples that have already been made:

Photograph an advert for free Weetabix biscuits
Weetabix are looking to take advantage of ‘dual screening’ behaviours with their new #takethebiscuit campaign, which asks for fans to take a photograph of their latest TV advert. Fans can then show their picture at a branch of Boots to pick up a free breakfast biscuit. Whilst the idea is an interesting one, it did have a couple of problems. The barrier to entry is quite high and, according to reports, some Boots stores were unaware the campaign was happening. You can see the advert below in all its glory, complete with #takethebiscuit hashtag to encourage Twitter conversation.

We Are Social’s design campaign for Kleenex
We Are Social have launched a competition to design the new Kleenex Box, partnering with internationally-renowned designer Kelly Hoppen to create a brief asking young creative talent to decorate the box in their own style. Using Talenthouse to collect entries, the final decision will then be made by Kleenex’s Facebook community, who will vote on which design gets made into the next tissue box.

Urban Outfitters and Converse’s joint Vine competition
Fashion retailer UO and trainer brand Converse have partnered to produce a competition on Vine, which asks fans to post a video of ‘A day in the life of your Converse’ for the opportunity to win $1500 in UO gift cards, 10 pairs of trainers and 2 different music related trips, in San Francisco and Brooklyn respectively. Whilst a number of brands have started using Vine to produce content, this is one of the first examples of a more in-depth campaign usage.

Ours go to play Chuck Chuck Goose. Where do #YourChucks go? @converse vine.co/v/bUzhzq5mFUK

— Urban Outfitters (@UrbanOutfitters) April 17, 2013

Guided Twitter tour by the Tate Modern
To highlight a new Roy Lichtenstein exhibition, the Tate Modern produced a guided tour on Twitter. A museum curator spent half an hour tweeting images and information about the artist’s work, allowing those who would be otherwise unable to attend the museum to interact with the content in a meaningful way.

Evans support ‘golden bikes’ activity on Twitter
UK bike shop Evans Cycles have partnered with record-holding British Olympic cyclist Sir Chris Hoy for a campaign called ‘Hoy’s Golden Bikes’, for which the Olympian has hidden 3 gold coloured bicycles around the country. Whoever finds them can trade one in for a brand new bike of their own, worth £1000. They’re supporting the activity on Twitter, with clues coming both from the official @chrishoy account and via the hashtag #hoyshiddenbikes.