Planning ::

Excellent presentation, by Nick Emmel at Dare, on how to write a creative brief  … and also why you are writing it and for whom.

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Best Practice ::

Samsung has been identified as brand owner being behind the forum posts – through their agency, The Viral Company Sweden, which were uploaded to engnder debate on their products – LED televisions.

The campaign attempted to create buzz in Swedish online forums through the posting of comments on numerous forums – all using various fake identities to hide the originator.

To monitor the online buzz, the agency inserted a tracking (smiley) link to a domain owned by The Viral Company Sweden at  power.moltoman.com.

The fake campaign has been exposed – and another user using the pseudonym “Felmeddelande” (translated from Swedish as ‘error message’) is following up the posts with complaints that this breaks forum rules, blogged Pers Värld.

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Retail ::

P&G is launching an online store – eStore – to test the water for direct sales to consumers. The platform is owned by PFS Web.

Interesting to see what will happen in terms of both take up by consumers and also in terms of retail price points and P&G possibly earn considerable higher margins with this semi-direct sales channel.

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Viral ::

Excellent online execution from Saatchi NY promoting anti-bullying …

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Microblogging ::

Again, an on-screen spat on Twitter (as reported by the BBC) shows the danger that exists for the uninitiated. Microblogging is a powerful communication channel – and one that has to be treated as such.

A political punch-up live on the net between Sally Bercow and person/s unknown.

Read it here in case it’s deleted.

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Planning ::

The launch of the iPad achieved the hype and PR Apple will have been wanting. And the coverage has been immense since.

What, however, are the implications for brands when the iPad ships in March?

The launch of the iPad achieved the hype and PR Apple will have been wanting. And the coverage has been immense since. What, however, are the implications for brands when the iPad ships in March?

Well, much has been said about the cost – starting at US$499/GBP$313 for 16GB iPad (though what will be the UK premium?). Looking at these US costs against the iTouch and the iPhone implies that the iPad is likely to be subsidised because of the expected Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).  Both the hardware (and chipset is new) and the software is bespoke for the iPad so this is a sensible assumption.

Taking this into account, what are the likely implications for brands?

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Social Media Examiner has published the results of a reader poll on the leading blogs we should all be reading … more »