100 Hours in a Field tells the story of what it was like to be at Glastonbury 2010 through the eyes of festival-goers themselves – people like Faye, who led the charge past the Pyramid Stage to find the best camping spots as soon as the gates opened.

It’s a communal blog that makes use of photos, videos and short messages sent from festival-goers’ phones or captured by the GlastoBlog team in the field.

Posts were published live throughout the 100 hours of the 40th anniversary festival – and everyone’s photos and updates were also plotted as flags on an interactive map of the site.

Posted by TC on 28 June 2010, 15:10

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The explosive growth of video on the internet – and the ability to create and access video inexpensively on mobile devices – brings huge opportunities for businesses, at the same time as letting individuals do things we couldn’t have dreamed of a decade ago.

Video is core to our products and services. Some examples:

VIDEO BLOGGING:

We help companies cover live events, tell stories and communicate with their customers in a much more honest, genuine, conversational way by using blog-style video.

We help businesses create and manage complete video-based blogs, we help you to ditch old-style corporate websites and replace them with a more human way of communicating, and we use realtime video blogging to capture the raw excitement of live events. We’ll even send out our team in their mobile blogging support van to help you do it.

Take a look at the some of the work we’ve been doing with Asda chief executive Andy Bond and the communal blog we managed for Orange at this year’s Glastonbury Festival: 100 Hours In A Field.

UGC VIDEO

Whether you’re aiming to “democratise the process of creating movies” or you just want to get your customers sending in funny video of themselves, we’ve got the tools you need to let people do it, and we’ve got production teams who can help package UGC (user-generated content) into really compelling products.

Our Profusion system is designed to make it easy to manage videos, photos and supporting text uploaded by mobile or web – and we provide managed editorial and moderation services for brands running UGC-based competitions or ongoing products. One of our favourites was Wannabe Wicked, which combined fans’ own video competition entries with behind-the-scenes videos recorded on mobile phones by stars of the West End show Wicked.

VIDEO ON MOBILE

More and more people are using their mobiles to download and view videos as phones become more sophisticated and the operators introduce simpler charges for using data.

We build and manage mobile internet sites featuring high-quality video content optimised for different devices. We also provide video advertising solutions allowing you to automatically stitch short ads in realtime before, during or after the video content a user has requested depending on their profile, the context, or the nature of the content. See an example in our Zap! service.

VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT

Every day we’re taking in live feeds of video from the UK’s top broadcasters, TV production companies, film distributors and games companies to turn into a range of different interactive services on web and mobile.

One example: We manage the Orange Film service uses trailers, clips and behind-the-scenes features to help people decide what to go and see with their Orange Wednesdays 2 for 1 tickets. We make sure clips are optimised for the device you’re viewing it on – your specific mobile phone, a PC, a TV screen – and we create supporting images and editorial material for the service. Find out more here.

Posted by admin on 15 October 2009, 09:39

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Asda has emerged this year as a real pioneer in the use of video, blogging and social media to transform the way a business engages with its customers – and we’re helping them to do it.

Back in May we sat up and took notice when Asda’s chief executive Andy Bond gave a keynote speech talking about the need for radical transparency and openness if businesses are to build trust with customers and employees in the future.

Since then we’ve been working with Asda to start down this path by replacing their old-style corporate website with a completely new site, Your Asda, which uses raw video and a much more open, conversational blog-style approach to interact with customers and seek their feedback and involvement.

Andy Bond himself is a fan of the way video blogging can give you a much more personal, honest view of of the people within an organisation and its culture. We followed Andy on a 1200-mile charity bike ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats, helping him and his colleagues capture the epic journey in a live video blog and bring to life the objectives of the Pedal Power campaign.

Now Asda has rolled out a new blog, Aisle Spy, where 14 people around the business take Flip video-cameras wherever they go, capturing what goes on behind the scenes and lifting the lid on how things are done.

Our work with Asda also covers communication among the company’s 167,000 staff through The Green Room – and some of Asda’s wider online activity in areas such as Twitter and YouTube. Here’s another recent example of how Asda’s people really “get” social media.

Posted by TC on 15 October 2009, 08:33

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The rise of social networks, blogging and collaborative online communities has created fantastic opportunities for businesses to change the way they listen to, talk to and discuss with individual customers and involve them in helping shape their products and services.

As with anything in the internet age a lot of time and effort can be wasted by running to jump on the latest bandwagon … only to discover that by the time you’ve settled into your seat the world has jumped on to another one.

The secret is to stand back and work out the really clever things your business could be doing in this “social media” world as it exists today, knowing it will change radically tomorrow, but being bold about the first steps you’re taking.

The big mistake is to listen to agencies who come along with their painting-by-number list of the social media must-haves they can manage for you: lovely channels, feeds or groups on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Bebo. Too often they help you knock up some beautifully-crafted pages on each of the big social media sites then leave them sitting there alongside a growing list of abusive and irrelevant comments, all going unanswered. It makes money for the agencies – but it underestimates the real significance of what’s going on in this space.

Our approach is to work with clients on an ongoing basis on initiatives that use social media in a way that’s much more relevant, impactful, constantly changing, and core to their current activities.

Some current favourites (they’ll change!):

BLOGGING

We’re big fans of a blog style of communication to create a more human, conversational way of interacting with your customers.

Asda went so far as to ditch their entire corporate website to adopt a more conversational way of engaging with customers in the Your Asda site we manage for them – and launching a blog called Aisle Spy, where a group of Asda colleagues “lift the lid” on the Asda business in posts using photos and videos recorded on Flip camcorders.

We help our clients set up blog sites and give their staff the tools to create compelling video-based blog posts – and we provide our own blogging support teams to cover live events.

Asda’s chief executive Andy Bond is a big believer in the use of raw, honest, straight-to-camera blog-style video to open up the business and give a greater insight into the people within the business. We followed Andy on his epic 1200-mile charity cycle ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats to help create his Pedal Power blog.

TWITTER, FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE…

We help clients manage their presence on the big social networking services. The key is not just to concentrate on what WE the brand/business want to say on Twitter or YouTube but to be out there checking what everyone else is saying about us, about other related things, and joining in the discussion. And then, yes, also throwing in new stuff of our own.

For major consumer brands Twitter – and the next big thing that will surely come after it – heralds a step change in understanding your customers. For the first time you can see in real-time what people are saying about you to their friends and acquaintances. People share and open themselves up in previously inconceivable ways on social networking sites. And if you watch kids using Club Penguin and other virtual worlds you’ll get a glimpse of how that trend is going to snowball in the future. It’s a powerful vision of the future, and an exciting one.

So – in the here and now – when we help a client set up and manage a Twitter feed we don’t start by talking about micro-blogging corporate messages; we work out how their customers and stakeholders are already using Twitter and talking about them, and how we can fit into those conversations.

Here’s another example of a use of social media that we think really hits the nail on the head. It’s another Asda example – this time on You Tube. [link to Asda Fulwood story]

Posted by Mark on 13 October 2009, 14:48

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