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Halloween brand watch
Orla mcGowan

Halloween brand watch

Whether you’re the person that puts on a pair of mouse ears and calls it a costume, or goes all out to hand-make a 3D cupcake costume that looks great but means you can’t sit down all night (yes, I am the latter), we can all appreciate good Halloween jesting.

It’s the one night a year when every brand, no matter what they’re selling, can show their creative and personable side by giving a nod to All Hallows Eve. Social media is the perfect platform for pushing these out and driving traffic, and Twitter in particular has been rife with spooky videos, pictures and hashtags.

These are some of my favourite contenders from this year.

Google
Google Halloween 2015
Always a fan of a Google Doodle, in the name of research this morning I spent a solid five minutes playing their Halloween flying game. Aimed at either children or bored office workers, it’s an interactive winner. I racked up a high score of 350. Beat that.


Cadbury Chocolate
Cadbury Halloween 2015
For excellent use of a hashtag and for uniting the nation over some of our favourite fallen (confectionery) heroes, Cadbury have made the list for #CadburyCraveyard. This social competition features cute stop-motion and animated videos and gives people the chance to win a limited edition rerun bar of Fuse or Marble. But what about Creme Egg Twisted, Cadbury?! When will it be making comeback? That’s the real question.


Tesco
Tesco Halloween 2015
Up next it’s Tesco’s social campaign – ‘Introducing Spookermarket’. Torn between wanted to see this in my local branch and knowing that I would definitely be the person who loses the plot, mows down fellow shoppers with my trolley and bolts after even the tamest of scares. It’s a great, family friendly one and the hidden cameras capture the hilarity.


Chipotle
Chipotle Halloween 2015
Americans generally put us to shame when it comes to all things Halloween and this is no different. Purveyors of fine Mexican food, Chipotle have expanded on their usual #Boorito costume competition to create the Endless Line video. This is tongue-in-cheek, Halloween with a heart. Poking fun at tasteless, processed fast food, it’s dry, hilarious and well worth a watch.


Adobe
Adobe Halloween 2015
Hands down winner of Halloween from now and until the end of time is Adobe for their #ScaredSheetless campaign. As a company that I get weekly updates from on my laptop, but aren’t entirely sure what they do, I am so impressed by this camp and hilarious video. It’s a great take on their mission to rid the work-place of paper. Love!

Just for good measure here’s a video of a pug dressed as a ghost. You’re welcome.

Happy Halloween!

Hannah Murray

Instagram launches new mini moments video app Boomerang

It’s gidday from Instagram as it unveils its newly launched app Boomerang.

The new, stand-alone app allows users to create low effort, mini videos of moments that play forward and backward, providing a GIF-like feel. Although Instagram is trying to steer us away from viewing the content format in the same light, suggesting “a boomerang” provides something a bit more “special and unexpected”.

In this new format, Instagram is encouraging users to capture a moment and let it come alive again and again on loop. Instagram want you to “transform an ordinary selfie with your friends into a funny video. Get that exact moment your friend blows out his birthday candles, then watch them come back to life again and again”. The experimental videos will be enabled for direct upload to Instagram and Facebook via the Boomerang app but the videos will also be saved to your own camera roll.

In today’s digital age, Instagram, one of the fastest growing social media networks of all time, knows only too well its need to compete with other social media platforms in bringing users new ways in which to publish content. Providing users with new ways of portraying and publishing their lives more creatively is one of the challenges given to all of the big players in social today.

Boomerang’s attempt to facilitate fun, mini moments will no doubt be a hit with users due to the minimal effort required from users to capture a moment in time. The only possible downside being that the functionality of Boomerang video comes from a separate app rather than living in the current Instagram app itself. Maybe something Instagram will merge over time.

To see how the app works, you can watch Instagram video on it in the blog post.

Scotland’s 5p bag charge: one year on
Georgia Lea

Scotland’s 5p bag charge: one year on

650 million single-use carrier bags. That’s the number it would take to cover the entire surface of Loch Ness twice – and you would still have 50 million to spare.

It also happens to be the (completely phenomenal) number that Scottish retailers are reporting carrier bag usage to have fallen by since the 5p bag charge was introduced on 20 October 2014, exactly a year ago today.

Previous statistics showed that shoppers in Scotland used more than 800 million new single-use carrier bags every single year – more per head than anywhere else in the UK. Shockingly, more than 7.4 million of these were being collected from Scottish beaches, streets and public spaces by litter collectors each year.

In October 2014, we worked with the Scottish Government to introduce the 5p charge to shoppers across Scotland in a bid to help tackle waste and help clean up Scotland’s environment. Since then, we’ve helped both the Government and Zero Waste Scotland raise awareness of the 5p charge amongst shoppers and to encourage retailers to sign up to Scotland’s Carrier Bag Commitment and pledge to record figures on bag usage and donate the proceeds to good causes.

During this time we produced hundreds of branded tote bags, successfully stuffed a giant elephant prop in the back of a much too small van, scrambled around on the floor of more than one shopping centre, and held multiple photocalls featuring everyone from Scotland’s Environment Secretary to helicopter pilots loaded with armfuls of reusable bags. We’ve come out smiling though, because the results have been more incredible than we could ever have hoped.

In just one year, usage has been cut by 80%, and signatories to the Carrier Bag Commitment have reported a staggering sum of nearly £7 million raised for good causes. Perhaps even more rewardingly though, the 650 million bags saved this year show that it’s now becoming second nature to shoppers to reuse their carrier bags.

So next time you’re out shopping remember to BYOB: bring your own bags!

Stripe expands digital skill set
Stripe Communications

Stripe expands digital skill set

To strengthen our integrated communications offering we’re excited to announce some new players that have joined the team.

Stripe has appointed a Digital Strategist, Designer and Digital Account Manager to further enhance the digital experience for our clients across all sectors and specialisms. Reporting into Digital Director, Darcie Tanner, the new roles are a strong mix of adding both new digital expertise to the mix, as well as increasing the skill set within the current team.

Emily Puddephatt joins Stripe as our Digital Strategist. Emily was previously at DigitasLBi/Lost Boys, bringing five years’ experience working on award-winning cross-digital projects, ranging from community management, influencer outreach and social operations through to full social and integrated strategy for clients such as Nissan, Interactive Investor, SAB Miller, BBC Worldwide and UGG Australia.

Hannah Murray joins Stripe as a Digital Account Manager, also from DigitasLBi where she spent three years working across the search (SEO) side of the business, with a focus on social search campaigns for UK and international clients such as Danone, Europcar and award-winning work for Premier Inn.

Rachel Patrick, designer (with digital design expertise), joins the team after working in the Digital Directorate of The Scottish Government, prior to which she worked agency side and has experience working with IRN-BRU, The Royal Mail, Glasgow 2014 and Nandos.

Our digitally integrated accounts have more than doubled in the last 12 months and there is no doubt in what direction the market is going. These new appointments allow us to continue to exceed client expectations and deliver a strong, creatively driven approach that builds upon and broadens our capabilities in today’s increasingly competitive and connected world.

Stripe’s expertise in digital has been recognised most recently with shortlistings in the Social Buzz Awards and UK Social Media Communications Awards and our addition to The Drum’s Digital Census.

You can see a full list of the Stripe crew on our Stripe People page.

Understanding data part 2: Appearance
Darcie Tanner

Understanding data part 2: Appearance

Following on from the post last month on understanding data acquisition, this post is going to address the fact that there is so much data out there – how do you know what you should be looking at, what good data looks like and which bits are genuinely useful. You are probably thinking this already, and you’re are right to do so. What constitutes good data depends on your objectives. For some it will be high numbers in social sharing or comments, for others it may be traffic to a specific web page or time spent on site.

What is good data?

It’s any data that allows you to better understand and deliver quality, contextual content to users.

What could this look like?
Data sample points that help you to understand your consumers/users wants, dislikes and behaviours:

Data Points
Social sharing (top left), Newsletter A/B testing (top right), Traffic referral source (bottom left), device source bottom middle), Visitor demographics – gender (bottom right)

Additional data-points to consider:

  • Time on site
  • Un-opened newsletters
  • Platform performance
  • Unfollows/unlikes

Too many look for high numbers across the board – particularly when using these figures to address KPIs. The issue here is that to achieve success in a certain space, to hit a certain objective, may mean that you have to sacrifice increasing figures in another area – and that’s okay. It’s important to set clear objectives and KPIs to reach those. Don’t just measure for measurements sake and cause strain to increase everything at once.

When looking at how people use your platforms or channels, for example, people may engage more with a post on Twitter than Facebook, even though the content was the same/similar, it’s key to take the learnings into account to ensure that you are delivering the right content types, topics and formats that the audience want to engage with.

The article you see shares for above (top left of image) shows that 2x more people were likely to share the post on Twitter than Facebook, particularly in the first 24 hours of the post being live.

Looking at the those figures (first 24 hours live) one might claim that the article was something people would associate themselves with and share out, so they must believe in/agree with the article, however it’s not something they want to share with their closer knit circle (Facebook) and not with their pure business circle (LinkedIn) which sits at zero. At the time, that may be a logical assumption, however when the same article was looked at a couple weeks later (see the sharing figures below), you’ll notice that Facebook has increased slightly and Twitter stayed relatively the same, however LinkedIn increased significantly, suggesting that the article might actually resonate even further with the more professional side of readers interests.

The key takeaway: Don’t look at your data to pull insights until you absolutely have to. Ensure you’ve given plenty of time for consumers to behave naturally with how and when they prefer to engage with your content.

But Twitter went so high, so fast, what’s up with that?
My hypothesis with 98% of the Twitter shares happening in the first 24 hours is that many people saw the article heading and shared/tweeted/retweeted without actually reading. They may have saved it to a read it later type app, however many people don’t actually take the time to read full articles anymore, and often take the risk of sharing any content that they think sounds like them from the title (yes, this can be dangerous, but that’s another post!).

Key takeaway: make sure when reviewing if your content is successful, don’t look purely at social shares alone. Make sure you overlay this information with data such as time spent on the page and bounce rates.

There is so much more that goes into understanding what good data is for you and how to use it to ensure it’s useful for your needs. In the next piece, we’ll look at the application of data and how to make it work for your needs.

Understanding data part 1: Acquisition
Darcie Tanner

Understanding data part 1: Acquisition

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is big data.

Whether you’re a small organisation, independent or part of a large organisation, you are not only creating some of that data, but you will be acquiring and probably own a bit as well.

Recently I spoke at MagFest2015 (read our summary of the day) on the use of data in publishing and over the next month I’ll be sharing aspects of the presentation on the Stripe blog. The three areas covered are:

  • Acquisition – ways to collect and collate your data
  • Appearance – what different types of data look like and which bits are useful
  • Application – how to use the data ongoing

Acquisition
The amount of data can be paralysing for many, knowing what you want to acquire and how to go about acquiring it is hard – and believe it or not, for many people, the next question is “Why should I bother?” The benefits can be vast – data can:

  • Provide feedback that you don’t get directly from users via support channels (people always talk about things they don’t like or that are broken – but don’t often talk about things that are working well!)
  • Raise questions that you may not have considered about how people use your content/channels
  • Enable you to create the content wanted by your audience, as opposed to what you think they want
  • Overlay with any target audience data for granular targeting and ad placements
  • Give you the insight to apply a strategic approach to your short and long-term planning

Ultimately, all of the above helps to deliver a stronger return on investment.

Reeling it in – some sources to begin gathering data:

Be proactive – there are ways you can go and search for data not directly through your channels, utilising tools and sites (free and paid) such as:

There are several reasons that keep people from taking advantage of the data, such as knowing what’s useful, set-up, implementation, understanding what the data means, pulling useful insights, resource and time. There’s the excuses out of the way and it’s never too later to a) get started or b) get it set up so that you are tracking and reporting properly. As the saying goes, we never have time to do it right, but we always have time to do it over.

Remember that just because you didn’t do it from day one or haven’t been tracking doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start (and if you want some help, don’t hesitate to get in touch!)

My Digital Day take-outs: Tackle the big questions first
Gemma Bell

My Digital Day take-outs: Tackle the big questions first

By 11am last Thursday there was some pretty big questions being asked of the delegates at the Marketing Society Scotland’s Digital Day 2015. Namely, how do you want to change the world? We’re talking in the context of brands here so not me personally, but even still. My exact thoughts in response were: Coffee. First. Please.

The speaker was Andre Campbell, Global Manager of Integrated Digital Marketing and Brand Partnerships at Microsoft and despite the enormity of that specific question he was doing a pretty slick job of convincing us that really, if you can’t answer that question then your brand is going to lack purpose. And these days it’s ALL about the purpose (Note: purpose, not proposition).

Andre is a really passionate speaker and got me thinking about how important it is to tackle these tricky questions up front and put them at the heart of how we, as marketers, build brands. If you want to succeed in today’s competitive world then you need to be so much more that ‘just another great product’. That helps of course, but it’s not everything – in fact, far from it. Brands need to show heart. Lots of heart.

I had a discussion with a colleague a couple of days before where her words echoed a similar sentiment – ‘start with the heart and the rest will follow’ and she’s right. Create a purposeful brand that stands for something. Evoke emotion. Take action. Win hearts and minds. Sounds good, right?

So how does this translate to content – today people want more from their brand and therefore more from their content. Andre states quite simply ‘build stories that matter’. This sounds like common sense to me but this stuff needs to be said out loud, because, well, sometimes common sense isn’t that common. And you only have to look at your own social media feeds to see the brands guilty of churning out content that does not matter.

Having said that there’s a lot of stuff that’s pretty awesome – Andre cited the Nike ‘We Own the Night’ campaign. I love this. They totally nailed it. Nike created a meaningful space for its female fans – it invested time and energy in them and the result was gold for everyone. I’m just gutted I wasn’t there.

For me, what this comes back to is thinking about the quality of content – Nathalie Nahi touched on this in her workshop around the science of online persuasion – and Tom Ollerton of WeAreSocial discussed it more detail asking another big question of the day, ‘if you stopped doing social now – why would anyone miss you?’. Yikes. So you can be timely, relevant, informative and entertaining but to really succeed you need to give your fans a reason to miss you – give them the content that they can’t get anywhere else. While exclusives are nothing new, we need to think hard about the audiences and channels we apply them on.

Digital Day 2015 definitely threw-up lots to think about relating to the role of content in building a really strong brand led-business. But for me it was all about the big questions. I was so intrigued that evening I asked my six year old how he wanted to change the world. His answer: make a donut robot. When I asked why, he simply said, can you imagine how happy everyone would be. Start with the heart and the rest will follow, maybe it is that simple.

Stripe secures Midori UK digital & PR brief
Stripe Communications

Stripe secures Midori UK digital & PR brief

We’re raising a glass here at Stripe after being appointed by Maxxium UK to handle digital and PR services for its melon liqueur brand Midori.

Fact: the distinctive green liqueur was first launched in 1978 at the legendary Studio 54 – arguably the world’s most famous nightclub in its day.

We’ll be shaking up a cocktail of digital and social strategy development, community management, CRM and influencer outreach as well as traditional consumer and trade PR and communications.

It’s all aimed at building awareness among the core consumer targets to strengthen the brand’s emotional connection with fans.

Maxxium’s Nick Barker, who is Brand Manager – liqueurs, had this to say about us: “Stripe’s pitch demonstrated a thorough understanding of the Midori brand and target audience. They have created a compelling digital and comms strategy to help us deliver, and it’s great to have them on board”.

It’s an exciting brief – cheers!