Swedish furniture giant IKEA has launched a new social media campaign to create the first ever personalised 3D showroom on YouTube.

Based on users’ own information on Facebook, IKEA’s tool creates a bespoke 3D model that can then be explored and tailored by users to create their perfect bedroom.

The 3D showroom enables people to see detailed product information and to click through to IKEA.co.uk to purchase any home furnishings featured in the room.

Go to bed happy

Carole Reddish, deputy UK & Ireland country manager for IKEA, said the campaign is a result of trying to better understand people’s needs, wants and dreams.

“We understand that every bedroom is unique, it is a space that needs to fulfil so many roles; for some it’s a place to work, for some a sanctuary, above all though the bedroom is a place to sleep”, she said.

“This tool uses design, inspiration and lifestyle to show what’s possible when creating the room of your dreams, ultimately helping you go to bed happy.”

Charlotte Morton from Google’s Creative Agency Partnerships team called the campaign ‘forward-thinking’.

“This is an innovative use of social media illustrating what is possible on YouTube for a creative brand like IKEA”, she said.

Social media innovators

The Swedish furniture giant’s latest campaign continues in the innovative steps of their previous social media successes.

In 2009, IKEA created a huge social media buzz with their Facebook tagging campaign.

The idea was simple – the first one to tag their name on a piece of furniture in a picture of an IKEA showroom on the company’s Facebook page got the item for free.

So Nike’s recent marketing campaign asking runners to ‘paint their city’ online by mapping out their running routes added a much needed splash of colour to the experience.

When Nike’s market research revealed a large proportion of young people were not excited by running, it launched the campaign using Facebook.

As well as allowing runners to create artwork based around their routes, Nike prompted people to start up running communities.

The campaign led to runners building up connections offline, following each other’s routes.

Due to the continued growth of existing contracts, our Client is seeking to recruit a talented web developer to make a significant contribution to the continued success of the business.

You will take responsibility for various bespoke project developments and the maintenance of digital campaigns. As a key member of the development team, you will work closely with Clients; therefore your ability to communicate effectively is vital.

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• To liaise directly with customers and to represent the business in a professional manner.
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• To thoroughly test all output.
• To fully document your development and testing.
• Provide information to management on the progress of development projects.
• Assist in identifying and implementing processes and systems which optimise work performance.
• To work as part of a dedicated project development team.
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We’re looking for a talented and professional individual with a wealth of knowledge and motivation.

Specifically, you will have:

• A degree in a relevant discipline.
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  - JavaScript 1.5+ (Asynchronous js/XML, DOM traversal and manipulation, Code validation with js-lint, Practical experience of jQuery)
  - XML/XSLT (client and server-side)
  - JAVA/JSP, PHP, .NET and SQL experience (desirable)
• Software experience including:
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• Experience of working within a clearly defined process.
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Volkswagen takes pride in its innovative application of new technologies.

To demonstrate its technical fearlessness, the company has launched an augmented reality advertising campaign in Norway.

The VW Test Drive a Print AD app allows users to test drive across the company’s latest print ads. Sounds exciting!

It’s not.

A demo video of the campaign reveals the stunt to be little more than moving your phone across a newspaper spread featuring a 2D flat landscape with a black line marking a road.

It’s as much like driving as, well, hovering your phone above a newspaper.

Technology blog The Next Web is still optimistic, calling the app “an engaging and fun marketing campaign”. But even they can’t help but pointing out that the “app isn’t exactly useful”.

Have a look yourself:

The idea behind the campaign, initiated by pop star Alicia Keys, was for celebrities to sacrifice their digital life until their fans had raised $1m for the ‘Keep a Child Alive’ charity.

It was initially believed that one day would be more than enough to hit the target but after three days the campaign had managed to raise little over $200 000.

Now Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Kim Kardashian, Usher and the rest of the celebrities taking part are waiting anxiously for their fans to step up to generate the remaining cash so they can get back tweeting.

On 3 December Lady Gaga broke her silence to appeal to her 7.2 million Twitter followers.

“Lady GaGa is still dead. Text GAGA to 90999 and donate $10 to help children fighting HIV/AIDS.”

The campaign’s lack of success is believed to be attributable to a high minimum donation amount of $10.

It has also been pointed out that there is something slightly absurd about a fund-raising campaign which centres around abandoning social media – the most powerful tool available in the modern world to reach people on mass.

Gillette has launched a Twitter campaign to find out if the public prefers bearded or clean-shaven men.

The campaign will see identical twins Dean and George Georgiandes – one shaven, one bearded – tackle challenges such as a pasta-eating competition and trying to get better service from shop assistants.

The verdict is given by the Twitter community – winner being the one who has more followers by the end of the campaign.

James Nunn, brand communications manager at Gillette, said, “The decision to be cleanly shaven or grow a beard is something that has probably crossed the mind of most men.

“Hopefully our research and products will leave the option of having a beard to personal choice as opposed to an uncomfortable shave.”

Follow the campaign on Gillette’s Twitter page and give your verdict by following either @georgiogeo or @dino_geo.

Source: Marketing Week

Even those who were still wondering about the importance of the role social media will play in the election may have had their minds changed by the fierce online response to the Digital Economy Bill.

The controversial Bill, that has been accused of being a rushed-through-piece-of-bad-legislation, resulted in, what BBC’s technology blogger Rory-Cellan Jones calls an “online storm” with furious tweets and comments condemning both the Bill and the process by which it was enacted.

According to Jones, this resulted in a clearly more thorough second reading and the whole incident demonstrates a real sense of people connecting with the Parliamentary process for the first time.

Campaigning with hashtags

Brian Kelly, a national Web coordinator and advisor from UKOLN, says that dismissing Twitter as a waste of time or full of irrelevances is evidently a mistake.

As the example set by the Digital Economy Bill shows, the focus of the conversation is shifting online, making Twitter an important part of political process.

According to Kelly this will be the first election to be fought around hashtags.

He said: “The use of Twitter is starting to become an important part of the political debate, with tweets becoming the twenty-first century’s equivalent to the heckles at election meetings.”

To the Twitter critics, Kelly points out that the fact that part of the conversation will inevitably be rude or irrelevant shouldn’t be used to dismiss the whole medium.

He said: “There will also be a lot of trivia being discussed on telephones, but nobody refuses to use the telephone because of this.”

Worth the risk?

While harnessing social media in the election campaigns is appealing, the danger of things going horribly wrong is something that political parties will have to consider.

A MediaWeek article quoted an unnamed senior executive at an election agency complaining about the unforeseen nature of the web.

He said: “It just takes one renegade MP to say something off-message and you’ve got political journalists ruining a campaign strategy it’s taken you weeks to create.

“Show me a story generated by the web that isn’t negative – and they’re being created 24/7 rather than just on the News at Ten.”

But there’s also another side to the coin. The Labour party have utilised their tech savvy supporters by fostering an online community to test ideas on.

Labour’s social media guru Kerry McCarthy said in a MediaWeek article: “If we’d shown them something like the Conservative’s Cash Gordon site, they would have pulled it apart in hours – showing us that it wasn’t very good and that it could easily be used by the opposition.

But all of this comes with a health warning. To avoid disasters Brian Kelly would urge parties not get overexcited about the possibilities and jump in head first.

He said: “What party activists are doing is trying to start a conversation. Social media offers a better informal channel for discussion but it’s important to remember that you should also listen carefully, otherwise there’s a great possibility to be seen as a fool.”

Case study

En garde – the digital swords are out

Inspired by Obama’s troops in the US election, UK parties have been busy organising their digital media activities – with varying success. Read more…

Inspired by Obama’s troops in the US election, UK parties have been busy organising their digital media activities – with varying success.

The Conservatives took a head start after the last election with their campaign sites, including David Cameron’s successful video diary, WebCameron. The Media Week reported that, up until recently, the Tories’ lead has been so substantial that the party has been hailed as an online pioneer in the April issue of Wired.

But even the pioneers can get it wrong. The Tories were recently the target of large scale online ridicule thanks to their naive use of unmoderated Twitter feed on the campaign website Cash Gordon.

The first individual social media disaster was provided by a Scottish Labour candidate Stuart MacLennan who was sacked by his party after tweeting offensive comments spiced up with swearing.

To make the situation worse, the Scottish Labour officials initially stood by MacLennan, blaming his bad behaviour on his young age. It took the Tories to attack with a call for Labour to sack MacLennan before any action was taken.

In addition to social media efforts, both parties have also turned to Google in their campaigning efforts – according to Rory-Cellan Jones, the Conservatives have bought 1,500 search terms in the recent days, including the likes of “fund my constituency”, “polling station” and “mortgage rates”.

And following the example of Obama’s digital campaigning, good old-fashioned email campaigning has also been utilised in the battle. With their reported half a million email database, Tories are investing in quantity whereas Labour is emphasising quality with their 20,000 email addresses.

Follow the latest digital campaigning in BBC’s Rory-Cellan Jones’ blog.

Tech site Pocket-lint has also put together a useful list of who to follow in the run up to the election.

Feature article

For the first time in the UK, social media is expected to play a key role in the outcome of the General Election. Just as the power to enrich campaigns and engage with voters is only a tweet away, the possibility of humiliation is not far away either.

Read our feature article – Parties tweeting their way to Downing Street

A social media attack on Gordon Brown backfired spectacularly and turned the joke on the Conservative Party itself.

The ‘Cash Gordon’ website was launched over the weekend to encourage web users to spread word of the Prime Minister’s links to the trade union, Unite.

What started as a clever social media campaign, ended up as an online embarrassment – by Monday morning, web users had realised that all tweets with a hashtag ‘#cashgordon’ appeared on the website without first being moderated.

The site was quickly filled with abusive messages, rude photos, YouTube videos of Rick Astley singing, along with tweeted code that redirected users to a variety of online locations including porn sites and Labour’s website.

A day earlier, the Conservative’s official blog was hailing the opportunities presented by new media: “In the brave new world of online politics it’s important to keep innovating in this way.”

All publicity is good publicity they say – but is it really?

A tweet on the campaign site concluded: “Tories can’t work the Internet. Wouldn’t trust them to run a tuck-shop.”

Have a look at the site here: http://cash-gordon.com/

Source: The Times Online, PC Pro, The Guardian

North East comedian, Ross Noble, is leading a social media campaign to put little-known funnyman Tommy Trinder at the top of a Channel 4 poll.

According to an article by The Independent, modern comedians want to see Trinder, who kept the nation smiling throughout the war years, featured in the new programme listing the top 100 comedians in the world.

The campaign is encouraging web users to vote for Trinder via social media sites. While Noble has used his Twitter account, Simon Donald, the creator of Viz, has set up a Facebook page for Trinder.

A post on Noble’s Twitter account said: “Tommy Trinder was a top act and would be funny to have an act from 50s top list. Last time I was ahead of Lenny Bruce so it’s bollocks anyway.”

The campaign, that has received public backing from comedians Tim Michin, Alan Davies, Jason Manford and Simon Donald, is said to be a protest against favouring new crowd-pleasers against great old British comics.

However, the efforts may be useless. Public votes will only be used as a guide and a panel of judges have been advised not to be “swayed” by the campaign.

Sean Doherty, executive producer at Channel 4 told the online comedy news website Chortle: “The panel is there to safeguard against the block voting which goes on. Last time we did it, after a few weeks voting and thousands of votes cast, some comedians went from being 120 to top 5 over a weekend because of the block voting involved, so we’re monitoring really carefully.”

Source: The Independent