Hello, we are social. We’re a global conversation agency, with offices in London, New York, Paris, Milan, Munich, Singapore, Sydney & São Paulo. We help brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media.
We’re a new kind of agency, but conversations between people are nothing new. Neither is the idea that ‘markets are conversations’.
We’re already helping adidas, Heinz, Unilever, Heineken, eBay, Jaguar, Intel, Moët & Chandon & Expedia.
If you’d like to chat about us helping you too, then give us a call on +44 20 3195 1700 or drop us an email.
After finishing a respectable 3rd in their first full season, We Are Social’s new-look five-a-side football squad were primed and ready for anything that could be thrown at them. The 2013-2013 season brought many new challenges: The new territory, new players (and most importantly a new local pub) should have made life difficult but the squad took to it like a duck to water. Despite a rusty defeat in the first game of the season, the ‘Social Warriors were not deterred and they began to grind out win after win. A month went by without defeat and word spread quickly. Before we knew it, faces were splashed across tabloid back-pages, challenges were coming in from left, right and centre from BBH and then Jaguar; everyone wanted a piece of the We Are Social cake. The fame clearly went to the heads of the inexperienced We Are Social squad and the resultant drop in concentration encouraged a mid-season drop in form.
A narrow defeat against the 4 men of Letzbe Avenue (league leaders at the time) sparked a barren run of 3 games without a win. A well-concealed Pandagirl trolling (aka Tarryn) compounded this negativity.
Injuries struck the squad; Rob had a grazed face and went to recuperate in the USA, Nick hurt his toe, Ed was getting some headaches, a ‘sober’ Tom H fell down some stairs and Andreas actually did get injured. Heads were down, and luck was out. Sitting 7 points back in second place, the prospect of finishing 3rd was becoming a distinct possibility as the dream of adding to We Are Social’s trophy cabinet was fading fast.
However, when the chips are down, the real men emerge. We Are Social exploded back into the race with a 7-0 demolition of De Wolf and, with Letzbe Avenue losing their first game of the season, the cat had been thrown well and truly amongst the pigeons. It was plain for all to see that the pressure on Letzbe Avenue was too much to bear. With We Are Social constantly breathing down their necks, any slip-up was magnified and before the press could print ‘dark-horses’, We Are Social had overturned the 7 point deficit and now sat high and mighty atop of the Kennington 5 a side table.
With just 3 games remaining, We Are Social were not to be denied. With Letzbe Avenue’s dramatic plight fresh in the memory, there was a ruthless mentality from all on display. The squad was competitive, and with that there were players keen to taste the Champions glory (special unrelated shout-out to Ollie O and Gareth…). A fiercely fought 3-3 draw confirmed We Are Social’s place in the Hall of Fame and wrote the names of 13 men into the history books.
The remaining fixture allowed for some samba-style exhibition football with tricks and flicks galore alongside some wonderful quotes: John “You can’t say ‘mine’, ref”, and the opposition’s optimistic “let’s try and concede a good goal tonight lads”. The 6-1 destruction of league new-boys AA Athletic showed the We Are Social at their best however, despite the performance being one of the highlights of the season, it was insignificant – this was party time.
The post-season tour kicks off on the 15th May against BBH. It’s time to strut our stuff away from Kennington and take on the world.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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:
Billyralphie: There are some particularly wonderful characters on the bus at 6:15 in the morning. And by wonderful, I mean heinous. 2 hours ago
LucindaMorrell: Loving the 'Get Well Soup' campaign from Heinz in this morning's @wearesocial newsletter. I shall be craving the tomato soup all day. 2 hours ago
chookasaurus: RT @qwghlm: Basically, you'll prise my hard-g pronunciation of "gif" out of my cold, dead, hands 3 hours ago
grayle: RT @qwghlm: If "gif" is pronounced "jif" then, as the g stands for "graphics", "graphics" ought to be pronounced "jraphics" http://t.co/ekZ… 8 hours ago
Apologies for the photoshopping!
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