05/01/2010

Goodbye Cow, hello Rabbit.

Hello, much-maligned blog. Yes, it’s been a while, but I’ve got something to tell you…

Today, something very exciting is happening. The wonderful PR agency I’ve been working at for the last 4 months, Cow, is launching a new online-only agency, Rabbit… and I’m in it!

So it’s au revoir to the Cow jokes (I’m moo-ving on…!) and bonjour, Rabbit.

In all seriousness, I’m totally, massively, excited to be offered such a great opportunity – and relieved that I can tell people as I nearly spoiled the surprise on many an occasion. We’ve had an amazing response from clients and potential clients so far, more work than we knew could fit into a week and more fun than work should legally be.

I mean, check our our pretty new site!

http://therabbitagency.com/

It’s exciting, changing, opportunistic times in PR/marketing/communications/digital now, and I feel like I’m hopping into the right patch to have the pick of the juicy carrot crop.

Go Rabbits…!

03/08/2009

Worse than Habitat hastag spam? How not to promote your brand via social media

So, during my lunch today I popped on to Facebook to see what my friends were up to.

 In my news feed, I spot this:

This has got to be one of the worst attempts at brand promotion via social media that I’ve discovered first hand. Silverberg Opticians’ comment is totally irrelevant to Mike’s status. This is tantamount to spam.
 
In a way, I think it’s worse than the Habitat Twitter hashtag spam debacle, because in order to for them to post this Mike had to become a friend of Silverberg Opticians (their profile is not a fan page) to grant them the permission to comment on his status. They are abusing the fact that he’s let them into his profile.
 
They might as well track him down in the pub and start trying to sell him glasses while he’s mid estate-agent-bashing with his mates.
 
On a practical note, even if Silverberg Opticians’ comment was relevant, they still haven’t maximised the effort they’ve gone to to make a comment. They’ve put a link to their website, but apparently don’t know that if they want people to be able to click directly through from their comment (which would undoubtedly boost the number of visits as a result of their ‘marketing’) then they need to include the ‘http://’ Without that Facebook (and Twitter for that matter) will just treat it as any other text.
 
And don’t even get me started on the multiple exclamation marks!!!
 
I can’t think on anything positive about what they’ve done, apart from the fact that they’re trying. But is a half-hearted or misguided attempt better than none when you’re invading online personal space?