Have you ever wondered how social networking ads would look like back in the 1940s?

Brazilian ad agency Moma Propaganda has just added a Twitter ad to their collection of retro future posters for social media services as part of the ‘Everything Ages Fast’ campaign for Maximidia Seminars. The viral campaign has become something of a hit over the past few weeks.

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There is seemingly a “technological revolution” released every second day in the digital industry, however every now and again something pops up which really makes people take note.

With the release of Facebook Places last night, it seems we are really entering the next phase of social media, a more diverse level of real-world interaction, as well as a completely new level of targeted marketing.

Places takes the existing concept of applications such as FourSquare and takes it to where people already are, Facebook.

While primarily aimed at iPhone users for now (Android and Blackberry versions are planned), Places introduces location-based services to the world’s most popular social network.

Places enables users to share their current location with friends, find out where their friends are, and discover new places of interest. Users can also add their own places of interest to the platform, whether it be a business or a residential address.

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With the current “keep up or fall behind” state of digital design it is more important than ever to be seen as a leader in the industry.

There is so much amazing technology at our disposal that what seemed impossible 12 months ago is now totally achievable with a touch of creative thinking.

We have to strive to continue pushing the possibilities of what current technologies can achieve. It is about taking the standard information available to us and using it, or presenting it in a new manner.

While Facebook Open Graph Plugins are relatively new to the scene, there has already been some really top examples of putting them to use in a manner that benefits the user (as opposed to using them for the sake of using them).

Levis

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A great example of social media and how it can bring people together.

Orange have teamed up with Poke London, to try and set a Guinness World Record for the most tagged photo ever on Facebook with GlastoTag. The site features a massive photo of this year’s crowd at Glastonbury, shot from The Pyramid Stage during half time of the World Cup match between England and Slovenia. People who were there can connect to the photo through Facebook, zoom in and tag themselves and their friends in the 70,000 crowd.

You can even filter the tags to show just your tagged Facebook friends and feel a sense of pride that you were all involved in the event. You might even see friends that you didn’t know were there.

How was it done? The 1,300-megapixel panoramic image was taken in just under a minute using a whopping two Hasselblad H4D-50 cameras mounted one on top of the other and rotated at 10 degree increments, going back 350 metres – to take in the whole crowd. The 36 images were then stitched together – making a pixel perfect memory of Glastonbury.

There are currently 4,200 tags on the photo and over 4,870 Facebook ‘likes’ for the page. With over 180,000 people at Glastonbury, and an estimated 70,000 people in this image, this can only keep increasing, making a huge impact across people’s home pages and conversations of memories on Facebook… as well as creating an association of the event with Orange.

If you were one of the lucky people snapped - find & tag yourself in their HUGE photo:
http://glastonbury.orange.co.uk/glastotag/?mc=1

Battle for the World Cup buzz goes to Nike in early rounds.

via USA TODAY (please note: Contextual links below will take you to USA TODAY result pages)

But the early “winner” in buzz is Nike, neither a World Cup sponsor nor partner of the sport’s governing body, FIFA.

Social-media monitoring firm Meltwater Buzz looked at online buzz May 24 through Thursday for 11 top sponsors, partners and other key marketers and found outsider Nike had 26% vs. 20% for Adidas, a FIFA partner, and 11% for Sony, also a partner.

Credit Nike’s “Write the Future” soccer ad that launched May 20 on Facebook, says spokesman Derek Kent. It’s had 14 million YouTube views.

For big-spending marketers who rely upon social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to economically create brand buzz fast, the importance of successfully riding the wave of global events such as the quadrennial World Cup can’t be overstated. “It’s a unique opportunity to tie your brand to the greatest sporting event in the world — in real time,” says social-media consultant Jay Baer. “So much in social media is about brevity, which lends itself perfectly to soccer.”

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We Love Creative Agency is proud to announce it’s relationship with Sony Ericsson as supplier of creative services. Kicking off with the design and development of an interactive campaign site for the Mobile World Congress 2010, the launch of their new range of handsets was supported by a Social Media strategy including Facebook and a mobile version of the site.

At the heart of the site design was a 3D interactive space, creating engagement and starting the story of the Sony Ericsson MWC event. Taking center stage were the heroes of the site, the phones themselves, supported by social media feeds that drove users towards established Sony Ericsson Social Media channels – creating more awareness and ultimately extending long term engagement.

Congratulations to everyone involved on a great project, an amazing effort all round and most enjoyable to work upon.

Checkout the Campaign Site, Facebook page and Mobile site

Recently the government released a safer sex campaign aimed at teenagers, which has been branded as ‘gimmicky’ and a waste of taxpayers money! The ‘Want respect? Use a condom’ campaign (initiated by the NHS Leicester viral banned from YouTube) was based around a custom made drama series which cost over £250,000 to film and create… and when launched only 5,576 people signed up to the series (over the past 4 months) meaning so far it has cost £45 per subscriber…

According to the government the campaign has been a success so far, but tax payers argue that “too often the government engages with gimmicky marketing and advertising because they think they are going to reach a new audience”.

Now, in this instance, I don’t necessarily think the government are trying to be too ‘alternative’, hoping to reach a new audience, but instead they are taking a more obvious route, hoping to appeal to the desired target market through known (and tested) social media marketing, such as Facebook, YouTube, mobile phones, etc… which makes perfect sense. However, I wonder if these methods of marketing are becoming over saturated.

Where they may have fallen down in this instance is simply through lack of (or the wrong type of) exposure… although saying that, we’re talking about it now! Even though the campaign seems to have had a negative response amongst tax payers and critics, it could have all been part of a cunning plan to simply get some exposure… and it could be argued that any exposure is good exposure!

Marketing methods such as these can generate great results, especially if the campaign is seeded and pushed in the right direction – but if incorrectly deployed they can remain unseen in an ocean of campaigns, all fighting to get pushed through to your inbox or txt to your mobile phone! Besides, it’s obvious that tax payers aren’t happy with the government taking this ‘risky approach’ – so maybe they should stick to more conventional methods… or finish the job they started and make sure it’s effectively fulfilled.

As creatives, it’s our responsibility to ensure that creativity helps create change, define future thinking and help towards shaping the way people absorb, understand and interact with the information they’re given. That way we can ensure that our marketing & advertising solutions will continue to grow ever more inspirational, more engaging and most importantly of all… successful!

It would be good to hear some other opinions and let’s see if we can help boost those stats! Go and visit www.thmbnls.co.uk, sign up and watch the series… maybe you’ll learn something