Yesterday MMC hosted an event with Pat McGrath, Global Creative Design Director of Procter & Gamble Cosmetics to share the top beauty trends from the Autumn/Winter ’12 Fashion Week runways with print and online beauty media. Media were able to experience new runway beauty trends firsthand via makeup sessions where they were replicated using COVERGIRL products.
MMC encouraged media attendees to use hashtag #covergirltrends to share their experience with their followers in real time and poll them for questions to ask Pat during the Q&A portion of the event. Follow @COVERGIRL and “like” the COVERGIRL facebook page to get all the latest beauty updates from backstage at Fashion Week.
On Monday, March 26th, MMC was pleased to learn that we, along with our client, Head & Shoulders, were awarded a 2012 Holmes Report Sabre Award for our “Get Legendary Hair” campaign. Recognized for excellence in the viral video category, Head & Shoulders bested four finalists to secure the accolade which stands for superior achievement in branding and reputation.
Itchy scalp and dandruff: lots of us have it, none of us wants to talk about it. Recognizing this as our biggest challenge, Head & Shoulders and MMC created a campaign that would drive brand awareness and build engagement around the brand’s partnership with the National Football League (NFL) and All-Pro Safety Troy Polamalu.
Right from the start, we knew our program had to be legendary: from a consumer perspective, success would mean reaching the brands’ target – the guy’s guy – in his world, on his terms; for media, we needed to build on the “Million Dollar Insurance Policy” that made the brand and athlete/spokesperson Troy Polamalu pop culture icons. The campaign we developed was designed to get fans talking during the relative quiet that preceded the NFL season. At the center of our program were three videos that starred the Steelers’ Safety in a variety of highly-shareable scenarios, one of which featured his fellow teammates, Brett (“The Beard”) Keisel and Hines (“Dancing with the Stars”) Ward. Talk about epic football hero wattage!
Supported by online advertising and a variety of PR tactics that included satellite media tours and leveraging the Social Graphs of the stars involved, the clips were featured on Head & Shoulders’ YouTube channel where they quickly captured the attention of consumers and top-tier media. Conversations initiated on brand-owned channels like Facebook and Twitter added to the buzz that was amplified by earned placements on top sites like The Huffington Post, USA Today and NBC Sports. To date, the videos have garnered more than 3.2 million views on YouTube alone, 40% of which can be attributed to female audiences whose passion for the game, the brand and its spokespeople rivals that of their male counterparts. By marrying this insight – that women actually enjoy football – to the combined Social Media star-power of Troy, Hines and Brett, we able to secure an additional 3.5 million media impressions fans on behalf of the brand.
Born of the efforts of MMC, the Head & Shoulders brand team and our integrated agency partners, this win is truly a testament to power of nimble collaboration. It’s also an example of how a brand can be transformed through the power of Social Media. We couldn’t be more pleased to receive this accolade and look forward to celebrating on May 8th when the awards ceremony takes place in our fair city.
Related links:
Troy Polamalu Gets His Million Dollar Hair Buzzed Off By A Teammate!
Troy Polamalu at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum
Head & Shoulders – Troy and Brett Dancin’ with the Hines
Welcome to Five for Friday, everyone – hope you all had an amazing week! Our RSS feeds were practically bursting at the seams with interesting stories this time around – followed are a handful that grabbed our attention:
According to a recent report from Pew Internet & American Life Project, the number of Social Media users in the US has doubled from 2008 to 2010. No longer a “guy’s game,” the population of male users has dropped by 3%, a finding that may present a threat to Facebook’s impending IPO. Related data from Pew has shown that women make up 58% of the Network’s 850 million users… (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project).
In a bid to increase adoption of its Android operating system, Google is said to be readying plans to get into the tablet business. Hoping to steal share from Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle, the Search giant would likely offer an array of devices, each co-branded, from a range of manufacturers. Companies like Motorola, Samsung and Asus are thought to be among the possible partners… (Source: The Wall Street Journal).
While CPG companies have long embraced tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as new channels to engage customers, financial institutions have been reluctant. A new survey on the Social Media activities of 50 leading private banks found that most had developed “amateurish” strategies, were “hibernating” on Facebook and displaying “tokenism attitudes” to Twitter and YouTube… (Source: The New York Times).
As Pinterest and Instagram continue to burn up the buzz meter, another platform – Tumblr – continues to grow at a remarkable pace. According to the social sharing service, they just hit 20 billion posts, doubling in size in just 6 months. Tumblr’s main audience comes from the US (249 million), followed by Brazil (49 million) and the UK (34 million)… (Source: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/171356/tumblr-continues-rapid-growth.html#ixzz1qd1u1Az6)
Reaction across the Social Web over the murder of Trayvon Martin shows overwhelming support for the slain youth’s family and outrage over his killing, according to a new report. The study also shows that news on cable networks and talk radio displayed equal suspicion over Trayvon and killer, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman who fatally shot 17-year-old on February 26th in what he says was self-defense. Sad… (Source: Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism).
And that about does it for this week’s installment. Have a headline to share? Leave us a comment and let’s discuss!
Until next time – have a great weekend!
Happy (almost) weekend everyone, and welcome to Five for Friday! As usual, we tracked lots of chatter in our digital world this week, from conversations about gadgets to discussions about interesting new start-ups and everywhere in between! While narrowing down headlines to just a handful is always a challenge, we tried our best to ID a few that we thought you might enjoy. Followed are this week’s picks:
A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 18% of teens send and receive more than 200 texts on an average day. 12% text between 101 and 200 times a day. The average number of texts sent or received each day grew 20% from 50 in 2009 to 60 in 2011, when the survey was conducted, with a large portion of the increase attributed to teen girls. Other demographics increasing their usage of texting include boys of all ages (from 30 texts per day in 2009 to 50 in 2011), African American teens (from 60 to 80 per day) and Hispanic teens who, as heavy users, were found to send and receive an average of 100 texts per day… (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project).
Finnish multinational Nokia has applied for a patent on tattoos that would vibrate when your phone rings or your battery runs low. Made using ore-infused inks, the tattoos would detect magnetic fields and “sense” when your phone was ringing. To dismiss the alert – which the company says would feel like a “tingling sensation” – the user would simply have to scratch their arm. According to Nokia’s patent the tattoo would be inserted under the skin, meaning users would need to have a “minor surgical procedure” if the technology was upgraded. Hmmm, I’ll pass… (Source: InformationWeek).
The results of a new MocoSpace survey suggest that the term “mobile gaming” may be a bit of a misnomer. According to the report, it turns out that quite a lot of us are more than happy to game when we’re not on the go: 96% of the consumers polled were found to play mobile games at home at least once a day; among those, 53% in bed. More than 52% admitted to playing for more than an hour a day; 32% more than three. In related news, Rovio’s latest installment of the Angry Birds franchise – Angry Birds Space – was just released. There goes my weekend… (Source: MocoSpace).
According to several sources, the launch of Apple’s newest iPad contributed to the Company’s biggest sales weekend. In all, an estimated 3 million units were sold in just three days. Continued fervor around the device has led the Street to reconsider its predictions for the device’s market share growth: one firm is forecasting as many as 66 million units sold in 2012. By 2015, they expect that number to reach 176 million… (Source: Various).
In their efforts to better screen candidates for employment, some companies are taking more than a simple glance at the Social profiles of applicants and asking them to supply usernames and passwords for a closer look. Companies that aren’t after such details have taken other steps – like asking hopefuls to friend their human resource managers or to log in via a company computer during an interview. Reacting to the legality of the practice, a former federal prosecutor called the very idea “an egregious violation of privacy.” What do you think? (Source: CBS | MoneyWatch).
So what did we miss? Leave us a comment and let’s discuss!
Photo Credit: Twitter
Today Twitter celebrates its sixth birthday. In those six years, Twitter has grown to over 500 million users and facilitated 140-character conversations big and small. Whether announcing breaking news, relaying the everyday musings of celebrities or mobilizing thousands of people as it did in the Arab Spring uprisings, Twitter is changing the way people all over the world communicate. To celebrate the occasion, we asked MMCers why Twitter is important to them. Here are their responses:
Twitter is my go-to source for news whether it’s hard news (it’s where I first heard about the earthquake in Haiti and the tsunami in Japan), the latest sports information or celebrity gossip. @alexacoughlin
Twitter is one of the fastest outlets to deliver easy-to-digest news bits. @__ying
Twitter gives me the opportunity to build deeper relationships with important online media by allowing me to connect in real time on a personal level. @samarafinn
Twitter is the fastest and easiest way to interact with brands when you’re looking for a quick response. @debragaynor
Twitter is one of the quickest and most effective ways to recruit: it also demonstrates how social media savvy a potential candidate is! @JuliaMConway & @katelizdee
Twitter is real people, sharing news the instant it happens. @sarahatwork
I log on to Twitter for beauty news first thing every morning so I can update my team and/or client on the latest trends, industry events, etc. @ktully26
Twitter is a great tool for that inside scoop to the lives of our influencers, team members and clients. We get to know their personalities in a way that you never could before! @liss0224
Twitter is a constant source of education about social media. @kristandietz
Reading a Twitter feed is like being a fly on the wall for the world’s conversation. Whether watching award shows or gathering breaking news details, I can always turn to Twitter for the latest, unfiltered commentary. @ErikaZayas
Twitter is solely responsible for my first EVER internship, and for that I’m forever grateful! @JennaGlynn
Happy Friday, everyone, and welcome to this week’s better-late-than-never edition of Five for Friday! On this, the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, we recognize that we’re probably standing in the way of your celebrating, so we’ll cut right to the chase with our picks for stories worth sharing:
This morning, Apple-addicts around the globe gathered to brave long lines in hopes of securing a new and highly-coveted iPad to call their own. The device, described as “more evolutionary than revolutionary,” boasts a number of improved specs including a larger screen, Retina display, a 5-megapixel camera, faster processor, iTunes/iCloud integration, support for nearly 600,000 apps and optional connectivity to 4G LTE networks… (Source: Various).
In an attempt to streamline the look of their profile pages, Pinterest has just undergone a significant makeover. The redesign – which Social-types had anticipated for some time now – is meant to help users better connect with each other and content more freely. The new layout bears more than a passing resemblance to Facebook’s new profile pages – coincidence? Hmm… (Source: Various).
According to BlogHer’s Women and Social Media in 2012 report, the influence blogs have on a woman’s purchase decisions is likely related to the amount of trust she places in the information and advice she encounters. Among those polled, 98% we found to trust the information they received from blogs, even ahead of Facebook (86%), Twitter (85%) and Pinterest (85%)… (Source: BlogHer).
CNN is reportedly in talks to buy Social Media news site – and personal favorite – Mashable. For those unfamiliar, Mashable tracks a wide range of topics related to the digital and emerging media space, covering companies that range from start-ups to key players… (Source: Various).
Findings from a new study suggest that sharing too much information via profiles on Facebook and Twitter is the number one way Social Media can cause stress in a relationship. The runner-up? Tagging your “ex” in a photo… (Source: FOX News).
So what headlines grabbed your attention this week? Leave us a comment and let’s discuss! In the meantime, Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh!
Happy Friday, one and all, and welcome to this week’s edition of Five for Friday! Between continuing conversations about the “new Facebook for Brands” and the introduction of a new iPad (are you getting one?), we had a ton of fun weeding through our RSS feeds for stories to share. Followed are a few that caught our eye:
Posted just four days ago, a 30-minute video about a fugitive rebel leader in Africa has exploded into an online phenomenon, igniting a debate about the group behind it and the threat posed by the rebel himself. The clip’s subject – Joseph Kony – is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder, sexual slavery and using children as combatants. To date the video has garnered more than 55.6 million views… (Source: Various).
According to a new survey, 63% of smartphone users in the US are uncomfortable using apps that would store their credit card information and allow them to make purchases at retail. Concerns over security remain the biggest obstacle: according to an survey released in December, 25% of smartphone owners worry that someone will hijack their information… (Source: Harris Interactive).
With their Blogger Faceoff contest, Detroit’s Chrysler has raised a number of hackles across the Social Web. According to one critic, the automaker’s latest campaign is little more than an attempt to “buy” the favor of Mommy bloggers with the promise of an iPad2 and trip to the Big Apple. No stranger to Social Media backlash, the Company (and their agency) now find themselves at the center of a whole new storm… (Source: Avitable).
In addition to adding full support for tweets posted in right-to-left languages like Hebrew, Farsi, Arabic and Urdu, Twitter is reportedly planning a major upgrade that would allow Brands to use e-commerce tools and run contests right from their pages… (Source: Los Angeles Times’ Technology Blog).
Despite mounting concerns over privacy following the recent consolidation of a number policies, Google is far and away the Web’s most popular Search Engine. According to a new report published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Google is at the top of the heap, used by 83% of the users they surveyed. By comparison, the runner-up – Yahoo! – was claimed by 6% of those polled… (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project).
Do you have a headline to share? Leave us a comment and let’s discuss!
