Fancy coming to a party?

Picture credit: Rulingcatsanddogs

Planning social media events, campaigns or activities is a bit like planning a big party.

You first need to plan what kind of party you want to give; you need to ensure you promote it to all the cool kids in town; you need to pick a suitable funky venue;  you need to act a gracious host and maybe throw in a little, light entertainment;  and then as the hangover kicks in, you might want to count the number of empty bottles to see if they’ve all had a good time!

As with all analogies it’s not perfect but it does help to explain some of the challenges and considerations which goes into planning social media activity.  You can find a more in-depth explanation of this party planner analogy by Matt Rebeiro from RMM on the IAB Social Media Blog.

This party theme also happens to be the theme underpinning the IAB Social Media Forum which is taking place on 8th July.  It will tackle all these planning considerations in an engaging and informative way with talks, round table discussions and even informal clinics where you can ask questions on a range of topic areas such as crowdsourcing, legal and privacy issues, research & measurement and customer service.

As it happens, I’ll be presenting the IAB framework for measuring social media to help party planners determine whether their guests had a good time!

You can find more information on the day, the agenda and how to get tickets, by simply clicking here. It’s also free for brands/advertisers so will only cost you your time!

Hopefully see you there.    I’ll be the one slumped in the corner!

Fiat Punto combines virtual gaming with the real world

Every now and again one comes across an ambitious interactive campaign which has so many technical challenges and potential difficulties that you’d understand if the initial idea never made it off the starting blocks.

So you have to admire this Brazilian campaign created by Agencia Click for Fiat Punto who have ingeniously managed to create a virtual online racing game with a rather unusual twist. Instead of your opponent being another online gamer you are actually competing against a real racing driver on an actual circuit.

Using various data feeds, GPS tracking, on-board cameras and CGI modelling they have managed to integrate the real car into the virtual racing game so that one can effectively test one’s driving skills against the professional driver.

I can’t tell how they organised the online event as the T-racer website is mostly in Portuguese I’m afraid. However, they did manage to maximise publicity for this campaign by creating a life-size simulator and convincing Big Brother to use this for one of the challenges in the show. Not a bad way to generate some extra PR!

Online contestant

Simulator on Big Brother

The professional racing driver

The real car

The real car as seen by the online contestant

Viewpoint

We’ve all seen racing games before.   But what sets this campaign apart is the way it succeeds in blurring the lines between reality and the virtual world to create a new consumer experience which captures the public’s imagination.

What I also like about this campaign is how it seamlessly combines interactive marketing, digital live events, experiential marketing and PR all rolled into one! Not as easy as it sounds.

It takes agency dedication, commitment, meticulous planning and technical expertise, not to mention a brave client to see something like this through to fruition.  So I was pleased to see it’s won Grand Prix at Wave in recognition for their efforts to go that extra mile.

You can watch the video here if you want to know more although you may need to brush up on your Portuguese first!

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more about “Fiat Punto T-Racer“, posted with vodpod