Blog

It’s not every day an account we’re working on gets voted one of the top 100 social brands in the country. Actually, make that one of the top 20 social brands in the country. Oh, and make that two accounts we’re working on…

Yup, according to top social agency Headstream – who published their second annual roundup of the UK’s most socially effective brands this morning – both Lurpak and Cravendale have exploded into the top 20, beating off such giants as Ford, Marmite, Google and last year’s no.1, Dell.

What’s more, this represents two out of only five FMCG brands in the top 25 results, with no other dairy brands even breaking the top 100! Needless to say, we’re very proud.

The Social Brands 100 list was drawn from an initial crowdsourced pool of 300 nominated brands, with the final results calculated using a combined ‘data score’ from social media monitoring firm Brandwatch and a ‘panel score’ from a panel of top industry judges. This panel included Twitter’s UK head of sales Bruce Daisley, and judged each brand in a number of key areas such as their success in creating a credible community and their prioritizing of fans’ needs over the brand’s own.

A huge thank you goes out to all our staff working across these two accounts and everyone else who helps make Outside Line one of the top social agencies out there.

Next year we’re aiming even higher, with even more of our brands in the top spots. Make sure you come and join us…

Here’s a round-up of the things that impressed us, sparked our curiosity, and made us laugh last week.

The thing we most want.

The trusty mouse and keyboard combo have served us well for the past few decades, but it seems our dreams of Minority Report style gesturing are finally a reality.

http://leapmotion.com/

An innovative use of a QR code (just when we all thought they were dead)

The same technology, used in an interesting and innovative way. When empty, the glass looks like it’s etched with a fancy pattern. Once filled with the black stuff, it becomes a useable QR code which is fully integrated with social channels.

http://www.psfk.com/2012/05/guiness-qr-code-pint-glass.html

An immersive 360 degree experience, on YouTube.

Whilst you might not appreciate the music, it’s hard to deny the 360 degree, multiple camera-angled views available on some of 02 Academy’s live music videos aren’t impressive. It’s great to see the evolution of YouTube as a platform.

http://www.youtube.com/o2academytv

Yet another incredible Google Doodle.

Google continue to impress with their doodles, and this one’s up there with the best (including our Freddie Mercury doodle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe0gIFxYhrk though we may be biased…) It celebrates the birthday of Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog Synthesizer. We possibly enjoyed this a bit too much in the office…

http://www.google.com/doodles/robert-moogs-78th-birthday

A song dedicated to the Facebook IPO. Yes, really.

Amongst the bombardment of IPO articles, news and rumours, it’s nice to take a step back and enjoy some absolutely ridiculous musical nonsense.

What does it mean to do business in a truly social economy? More importantly, what does it take to succeed?

These are two questions at the forefront of any modern marketer’s mind, although the answers are slightly harder to come by. Thankfully, this month we’re hosting our very own seminar on the subject so you can really get to grips with your place as part of ‘The Networked Economy’.

Taking place at The Hospital Club in Central London on the morning of Friday 25th May, our planning director Ronnie Crosbie will be taking guests on a whistle-stop tour through three of the most influential marketing texts of recent times – Alan Moore’s ‘No Straight Lines’, Joseph Pine & Kim Korn’s ‘Infinite Possibility’ and Alex Bogusky & John Windsor’s ‘Baked In’.

Using these texts as a foundation, Ronnie will look at how advances in social, mobile and digital technology have rewritten the landscape of the modern marketplace, returning us to an economy in which word-of-mouth, personal recommendation and social communication are once again the keys to brand success.

The talk runs from 8.30am – 10am. Attendance is entirely free, however places are limited.

To reserve your seat, send us an email with the details of how many places you would like and which company they are for.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Yesterday, we launched ‘FoodBeats‘, an online music tool for Lurpak® in partnership with Last.fm. And what better way to celebrate than use the tool just how we intended – by creating some culinary delights and listening to some tunes!

As we’re not fortunate enough to have an oven (microwaves really don’t count), we bought in a variety of ingredients, and challenged the office to make the perfect sandwich.

What did we learn from the experience? Well, it’s pretty difficult to prevent a free-for-all when you’ve got 60+ people trying to make themselves a sandwich. But most of all, FoodBeats really is great for providing the soundtrack to your cooking (or sandwich making) experience. Thanks to Last.fm, some pretty awesome tunes came up on the playlist. No more butter-covered fingers all over the laptop keys as you search for a track!