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Saw this interesting approach to a campaign by free conference call provider Powwownow on the London Underground a few days ago.

Called Love/Hate Travel, commuters are encouraged to “deal with travel rage and radiate their own peace and calm” by either participating on the Love/Hate Travel site or using the Twitter hashtags #lovetravel and #hatetravel.

Some of the conversations on the tube this morning are incredible, one woman is openly talking about an affair she's having! #lovetravel

March 8, 2011 9:38 am via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@Kev_Andrew

Kevin Harris

They also have the token Facebook page (83 likes), YouTube channel (1 video, 43 views) and Flickr page (5 photos). Sigh.

I like the idea of encouraging users to use specific hashtags and using that as the centre of the campaign. Something I haven’t really noticed that much.

I’ve had quite a frustrating few days with Orange, to give you a bit of a background I basically haven’t had data reception where I work in Waterloo for nearly 4 months. I literally get all my emails and BBM’s when I go into another London borough which is pretty annoying as I’m in Waterloo 40 hours a week

Apparently this is down to some service problems in the area which are being worked on, every time I call it’s the same story: deal with it till we fix it.

On Wednesday the situation was a bit different, I couldn’t get data services in the whole of London. So I gave customer services another call and they tried to talk me through some steps that haven’t worked the previous 50 times I’ve spoken to them.

After getting nowhere the rep scheduled a call for later that evening when I would be indoors to rule out the mast disruptions in the city.

Slight problem, rather than schedule a call back… she cut my phone off and changed my number. Errrr.

Luckily I’m carrying two phones at the moment, not because I sell crack, but due to recently getting the iPhone and not being able to get rid of the Blackberry because BBM has its hooks into me (more on that in another post). I started getting messages on Facebook from friends asking if I was ok and if I was in trouble. After ringing my phone and hearing a dead line I figured it had all gone wrong.

It was late and customers services was shut so decided to leave it till the morning and called to fix the problem.

However I ran into another barrier by speaking to a man who wouldn’t believe that I didn’t request to change my number or do anything to find out what happened.

The convo went like this:

Me: Can you tell me why this happened, why did you change my number?

Orange support: Well you must have requested a number change so that has now happened.

Me: I didn’t change my number.

Orange support: Well you must have requested a number change so that has now happened.

Me: I would know if I asked for a number change, I never asked for a number change

Orange support: Well you must have requested a number change so that has now happened.

Me: I’ve had the same number for 5 years, I never requested a new number, why did you change my number?

Orange support: We wouldn’t change your number without you asking, if we did you could take legal action

Me: (I suddenly perk up) Wait I can take legal action can I?

Orange support: Eer Eeer. Well you must have requested a number change so that has now happened.

I actually nearly haymakered my monitor at work because this guy was so frustrating but he managed to change my number back. The data services were still knocked out so rather than go through the nightmare of calling back and destroying the office in the process, I decided to give Twitter a go.

First port of call was tweeting the very active and well known Conor Maples (@conorfromorange) who is the PR Manager for Orange. He replied to me in the past when I tweeted about being spammed by blank Orange MMS ads and went to the effort of sorting it out.

Conor directed me to @Orangehelpers where Jon was a bit legend and got the right person to help me fix the problem in literally no time at all, and I got my data services back (albeit only in 2G). Jon also found out the reason why I was cut off (human error) and credited my account with a months free line rental << Win.

Here’s the stream:

But wait! Guess which network tried to use my troubles with Orange in a bid to seduce me? Check it out:

So I’ve gone from hating Orange, to being really impressed by the social CRM they are doing, to suddenly getting my head turned by Vodafone showing me a bit of leg.

I honestly think this is how you utilise social media if you’re big business, you dedicate a few people and turn really pissed off customers into advocates. Amazing what a simple strategy can do. If I was Vodafone/Orange, I would stalk competitors Facebook pages and try and convert customers who complain on walls by doing exactly what you’ve seen here, either by replying publicly or privately to the customer.

Reminds me of when Samsung gave free phones to iPhone 4 customers complaining on Twitter with reception problems.

Video above: A common reaction to Two Girls One Cup.

I’m pretty sure the most basic rule of marketing for a global brand is to not use any references to the most disgusting pornographic video ever made in the history of mankind.

Apparently agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine skipped class that day and in their recent Facebook campaign for Dr Pepper they went all out.

Here’s the outline

“The agency’s latest campaign for Dr. Pepper was an app on the social network that gave consumers the chance to win £1,000 if they allowed the brand to take control of their status updates. Starting in May, Dr. Pepper fans allowed their status updates to be filled with such gems as:

“Lost my special blankie. How will I go sleepies?”

The messages were randomly generated and ranged in degrees of embarrassment. One of the more offensive updates ended up on the profile of a 14-year-old girl. The message read:

“I watched 2 girls one cup and felt hungry afterwards.”

Amazing! A Coca-Cola brand soft drink mentioning a poop-eating porno! The only time you should ever mention that porno is if you want to induce vomiting from your audience, I doubt that was in the brief.

I would love to have seen the look on faces when word got to head office.

So a Coca-Cola spokesperson tells The Guardian:

“We apologise for any offence caused. As soon as we became aware of this we took immediate action and removed the status update from the application.

We have also taken the decision to end the promotion. We were unaware of the meaning of this line when the promotion was approved and have launched an investigation into why it was included.”

If you’ve never heard of ‘Two Girls, One Cup’, rather than be responsible for your instant dismissal at work for trying to find it, I have a YouTube work friendly clip that will sum it up for you:

You know it’s World Cup time when Nike releases it’s traditional superstar-filled advert for the summer tournement. I’ve grown up with these ads and every year without fail I get goosebumps in anticipation for the Big Cup.

Nike gave its Facebook fans first glimpse of the advert before a wider introduction, a great incentive to follow a brand rather than the usual unimaginative newsletter style spam you tend to get from companies on Facebook and Twitter these days.

News of the adverts availability prompted 107,000 fans to sign up to watch the commercial which was released 6 hours ago. You can check out the fan page here.

Fans will be able to edit the spot to create their own Facebook soccer campaign, the best creators will be sent to Nike Academy soccer camp.

They’ve topped the Next Level ads by a mile, Rooney defo gets the best skit out of all the players I reckon. This is going to be b.i.g.

Check out the nod to Facebook ‘Likes’ and YouTube!

Adding this to the 17 greatest football ads!

I……love…….this.

Spot on.

Reminds me of slide 8 of my 2010 predictions.

It’s not often you see a bank being innovative, that’s why this initiative from First Direct (http://www.live.firstdirect.com) caught my eye.

First Direct is part of the banking giant HSBC and offers online and telephone services in the UK with no actual branches. Their strapline is ‘banking’s better in black and white’ with the idea that First Direct is “honest, open and transparent” which ties in nicely with this campaign.

First Direct Live measures feedback from customers across the web, as well as inviting them to comment directly on the site. The page features Flash widgets that show sentiments such as positive and negative words being used about First Direct on websites such as Review Centre, Dooyoo and Ciao. However it looks to me as these three sites could be the extent of it’s external web sourced comments as First Direct doesn’t list where the information comes from, which is utterly lame considering this is all about being ‘transparent’.

There’s even sharing options in case you want to show all your Facebook chums how well First Direct is doing with customer feedback!…

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The only way this could benefit anyone is if you wanted all your friends to flock to the ‘hide’ button next to your newsfeed updates so that they never see any more from you again.

According to this blog, “It works by taking everything that’s said about us online, from over 8 million forums, blogs and social media sites, and then feeding it, live onto our website for all to see”. However out of those 8 million sites (are there really that many?), I can only see Review Centre, Dooyoo and Ciao mentioned. Read more…

I’ve never owned a 4×4 before but I can imagine the temptation to drive around like your in a monster truck is huge. One woman in Canada could no longer fight the urge and decided to drive over a few cars with her BMW in a Ontario gym parking lot.

Security cameras caught the whole thing on tape and before you know it, the video has 1.7 million views on YouTube. Check out the video:

Read more…