Last week there were two incredible lapses in judgement from brands that saw people up in arms.

Firstly, Habitat. This has been well documented and covered but to recap – Habitat’s first foray into the Twittersphere ended disastrously after some bright spark decided that leveraging key trends or hashtags on Twitter would be a great way of getting more eyeballs on their tweets.

This resulted in the likes of “#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card” being posted on their account.

The second, Perez Hilton (yes, he counts as a brand). Upon learning about the tragic death of Michael Jackson, Perez posted this on his popular gossip blog.

This resulted in uproar on social media channels and the #unfollowperez hashtag started doing the rounds.

Both Habitat and Perez received negative comment and coverage as a result of their exploits and both were swift to apologise and correct their errors – Habitat deleted the offending (and offensive) tweets, Perez removing the image.

What is interesting is not the consumer backlash – this is to be expected given the errors in judgement, at least by anyone with half a mind – but the immediate forgiveness shown to both parties by consumers.

Yes they are continuing to receive a small amount criticism and yes both cases may have causes irreparable damage to each brand but largely the apologies were met with general acceptance.

The point is, and this is something I reiterate whenever asked to give a client a social media workshop, brands in general are still learning how best to leverage social media channels and mistakes will be made (even really stupid ones). But, as long as you learn from those mistakes, make adjustments and improve then social media can continue to be an incredibly fun and powerful channel which should be leveraged.

Using your audience as your marketing moral compass is not a bad thing as long as you do listen and change direction when told to.

I doubt Habitat will make the same mistake again – although judging by their Twitter account they may have just given up altogether. And, whilst Perez probably lapped up the controversy it could have been much worse than it was and he’ll be sure to double check his sources before opening MS Paint again.

Five things you should check out before the week’s out:

1. Buzz and Snoop are teaming up for a rap duet. Sometimes the most unlikely partnerships can generate column inches
2. Kid reacts to his mum cancelling his World of Warcraft account. Never underestimate brand loyalty or consumer passion
3. Let it Ring! One of the most powerful and creative examples of communicating a road safety message I have ever seen. Previewed at Cannes Lions
4. Ever struggled to explain what Twitter is? The site’s co-founder Biz Stone provides an overview for @rbolivar’s Mum at Cannes Lions
5. Michael Jackson performing Man in the Mirror. A song by one of the greatest musicians of our time, in his prime

Have a great weekend.

Anyone that follows me on Twitter will know that I have just returned from the Cannes Lions Festival where Hill & Knowlton was playing host to its own seminar (the first time PR has been included in 56 years).

We decided to show off a bit so recruited Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to speak and held the festival’s first ever live tweet-up.

You can check out videos from the seminar here.

I was lucky enough to hang out with Biz who turned out to be a class act and uncovered a few interesting facts about the man that you might not know:

• He’s a strict vegan and even wears “vegetarian” shoes
• He loves portmanteaus and can come up with them in seconds
• He likes tequila…but in a connoisseur kind of way not in a “slammer” kind of way

Check out the videos above as they offer some real insight into how Twitter came about, Biz’s thoughts on why it has become such a phenomenon and what the future holds.

Enjoy!

I know I know – 6 months and not a peep. Things have been a little hectic but the time is right for me to return to the blogging fold. And, to mark danleach.co.uk rising from the ashes I have a new design courtesy of 5THIRTYONE.

With a new design comes a renewed focus. A focus not only on PR but marketing in general with the consistent theme of celebrating creativity within the industry.

Speak soon!

My morning kicked off with a conversation about Twilert and in particular why the site was launched in BETA and what BETA actually means. It got me thinking about my reasoning behind it and I ended at the question of “Why would I ever take the site out of BETA?”

For me, BETA means the final version of a service or site before small tweaks are made and a final, clean version is rolled out to the masses. However, that implies that the service is perfect as doesn’t require constant TLC, tweaks and improvements and I’m yet to find a single online service that fits in the “perfect” bracket.

The point is that, as I am finding with Twilert, user interaction online now means that feedback and advice for online tools and services comes thick and fast and webmasters (for want of a better word) need to react to this feedback by incorporating it into their sites. The feedback will never stop and therefore neither should the tweaking.

BETA works for real-world things, things that can’t be upgraded or changed en-mass easily. But online, there is no such thing as BETA. Every CEO, CFO and webmaster should treat their site like it is constantly in BETA and mould their service to meet the demands of those using it. If you don’t then a competitor that does, will, and you’ll lose users overnight.

It’s been pretty quiet round these parts (again) but there is good reason. Between my day job (usually 2am – 3am) I have been working on a new Twitter application that effectively replicates the Google Alerts service but, yes you guessed it, for Twitter!

So, I proudly introduce Twilert.com to the world!

Ideal for anyone interested in following opinion or discussion on brands, products, people – anything really.

Give it a go, it’s dead easy to use and completely free. Let me know what you think.

Oh and follow us on Twitter too.

Has the world gone mad….and when I say world I mean the British media?

I’m not condoning the actions of Russel Brand or Jonathan Ross, what they did went beyond an innocent prank and simply wasn’t funny, but this morning I’ve woken up the front page outrage aimed at the pair. What’s more, Gordon Brown has jumped into the furor blasting the pair, and Sky News informed me that the issue was likely to come up during Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon.

With two wars, an economic crisis, an entertaining yet globally relevant US election, Tory sleaze etc is the outrage caused by this practical joke really reflective of its severity?

I can’t help but think it’s all gone a bit to far a la Princess Di (oh no he di’n't). Perhaps Elton John should dust off his songbook.

While I’m on the point of the media: On Sky News this morning, after Noel Gallagher blamed the decline of Top of the Pops for youth crime, its newspaper critic responded – “I don’t know if it’s true but it’s a good point!”

A good point indeed, particularly if you step out of the realm of reality. As the old saying goes…why let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Rant over!

Another day another Internet meme doing the rounds.

MIchael Litman from LitmanLive and [EDIT 30/10/2008] Paul Stallard have tagged me in the Three for Three post where bloggers are encouraged to list their three choices across three categories before tagging other bloggers to continue the chain.

So, here goes…

Top three non-work websites:

• - Football365.com – The number one resource for the UK football fan. It isn’t the mecca for stats that the BBC is but its mix of irreverent comment, insight and humour makes it a winner in my book!
• - Digg.com – The ultimate time waster but an incredibly useful one. An instant snapshot of what’s hot on the web
• - TheOnion.com – Older than the WWW itself. One of the few US sites to do satire very well

Top three karaoke songs:

• - Don’t Stop Believing by Journey – “I love Journey, but I hate baseball cards”
• - We Built This City by Starship – Guarantee you’ll get groans when this first comes on but 2 minutes in you’ll have the entire bar singing it with you
• - Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi – For little over 3 minutes you honestly believe you are a rock star

Top three weekend cocktails:

• - Mojito from anywhere
• - Raspberry Collins from Lab on Old Compton Street
• - Old Fashioned from Match just off Regent Street

That’s given me a craving for a bit of Journey…”She’s just a small time girl….”

You are now tagged…

• - Gaylene Ravenscroft from Collective Conversation
• - Candace Kuss from Brand Street
• - Paul Stallard from Paul Stallard’s Technology Blog

I was catching up with some friends earlier this week, most of which work in some sort of marketing / digital / interactive capacity. During the course of dinner we noticed the array of mobile phones on the table and in particular the fact that 5 out of the 6 phones were iPhones.

The conversation moved onto how to engage consumers on the mobile platform (seriously, we have some crazy rock ‘n’ roll dinners) with half arguing that brands need to engage users through iPhone apps and others arguing that the market share of the iPhone was still too small for it to warrant such a large focus. My view, for what it was worth, was that the focus should be on non-iPhone but there is no reason why this can’t be supported through the iPhone.

Anyway, it struck me, looking at the array of iPhones on display, how important it is for us to remember that as marketers we aren’t our client’s target audience – and we shouldn’t lose sight of what is the norm for us and what is the norm for the general population. I’ve see it so often, and I do it myself, when marketers presume audiences behave in a certain way based on their own experiences.

It’s vital when preparing comms. plans whether it’s PR, advertising or marketing that throughout the planning stage we engage and understand the audience we are trying to reach. We’ve (H&K) recently hired a planner and she’s already had us monitoring tourists at the British Museum or shadowing grocery shoppers in supermarkets!

Understanding our clients’ audience’s mindsets and behaviours more deeply allows us to better engage with them and ultimately achieve cut through with our messages.

I’m beginning to find some innovate ways brands are leveraging the Twitter platform. Two new services caught my eye this week!

The first, Qwitter, aims to help stop people smoking. As a non-smoker I haven’t tried it but it’s simple to get involved. Simply follow Qwitter and send messages to the user (@iquit) telling it how many cigarettes you have had. Qwitter will track how many packs you’re getting through and provide tips and advice to help you kick the habit.

The second is Tweet What You Spend which, like Qwitter, allows you to send messages and track how much you are spending day to day.

What I love about this is the fact that it’s such a simple way of engaging an audience through an existing and established platform. Both Qwitter and Tweet What You Spend are the start of brands engaging Twitter users with value-add services.

Many of our clients are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, using it as a simple comms tool. But, the examples above show that Twitter is becoming much more than a micro-blogging service and extending beyond comms and into a powerful web app for both brands and consumers.