A friend of mine dropped me a note about this new campaign yesterday and I thought it was worth discussing on the blog. JustGiving, the UK’s largest online fundraising platform, and the international children’s charity War Child have teamed up with Sports Interactive and SEGA’s ‘Football Manager™’ in a cause-related marketing partnership launched this week. Football Manager 2011, which is amazingly now in its sixth series, will include the charity's’ banners on the virtual advertising boards alongside the pitch, which when clicked, will actually allow users to make donations to War Child through the JustGiving website. I have seen advertising on ...

I was reading an interesting post by Patricio Robels this morning on econsultancy entitled: Can brands trust social media platforms? My first thought is not really but does it really matter all that much that they are not 100% reliable. In the post Patricio comments: Upon logging in to Twitter on Monday, I was greeted with the news that I was following nobody and had no followers. So while this was a temporary glitch resolved within a few hours, it wouldn't have been the end of the world if all was indeed lost. Yet for a brand that has invested heavily in Twitter, logging in to see ...

Unless you have been hidden under a rock for the last twelve months you must have heard about Foursquare which has been the latest geo-location craze to hit social media in 2010. Basically the premise is you have to travel around checking in to locations near you securing points for travelling around. If you “check-in” to one location more than someone else you become the Mayor of that location and that generally means very little. In the US, and a small splattering of companies in the UK, this can entitle you to ...

In December 2009 Facebook made a few adjustments to its formal policy on competitions and promotions which you no doubt will have heard about. The net result was that promotions on Facebook can’t hold: Photo contests which require profile photo manipulation Status updates which require posting updates for entry  Only contest entries once a user has become a fan of your page A couple of my clients have been liaising directly with Facebook over this and we have found out that you can actually hold a competition on your page if you support it will £5,000 worth of Facebook advertising. ...

Those of you that read my blog regularly will know I have been working on a couple of exciting internet projects during the last six months in my quest to become the next Steve Jobs (Joke obviously). One of these said projects is TheFashionPixie.com which I wrote about way back in December. The idea behind TheFashionPixie is people send in details of the latest retail sales they have either seen on the high street, or in their local independent stores, and they are collated in one online community. We then share all of ...

This weekend I really witnessed the power of Twitter and social media and it surprised me for the first time in a long time. On Saturday I was busy at home cutting the grass and doing my fatherly duties, when my mother turned up at our house with two beautiful and friendly dogs. She found them roaming the streets on one of Harrogate’s busiest roads. My mum had a good look around for the owners but couldn’t find anyone who knew who they belonged too and sadly they didn’t have any collars on either. So ...

I am an administrator on quite a few Facebook fan pages. I use the platform with some of my clients depending on whether the platform fits the client’s communications strategy. There are good things and bad things about Facebook. A good thing is it is constantly improving and looking to make its experience better. A bad thing is it often doesn’t communicate its changes well with its users, which often results in groups springing up displaying their hatred of its latest version. I always wonder why it doesn’t supply a simple two-minute video explaining its new features like so many other applications. In the earlier days of the platform we used to use groups to bring ...

It is no surprise to any of us that the housing market, although picking up a bit in recent months, is still suffering from the dreaded R word. Many first time buyers have been struggling to get mortgages from banks and even long term property owners are finding it costly to sell. Well things might be on the up as some clever little chaps (which I met recently) have come up with a new concept on private property sales and buying or renting for that matter. Bethemiddleman.com does exactly what it says ...

The most exciting DJ product to enter the world of DJing in the last ten years was arguably the Pioneer CDJ 1000, well now Pioneer has launched its younger brother with more bells and whistles than ever. These new turntables have a mind blowing array of features and software. I had two CDJ 1000 MK 2’s and I have played extensively on the MK 3s, so I can’t wait to get my hands on these. Duncan one of my good friends over on the Rising Music blog comments: “With one these decks coming in at roughly the price of two mk3's (£1,499 each!) I think Pioneer is going to have a ...

Are you looking to build up your Facebook friends or overall fan base on one of your pages? If you are, you will be pleased to hear that you don’t have to work hard on building better relationships with people anymore because you can now buy friends instead. Yes you heard me correctly, according to Advertising Age you can buy them in groups of thousands - how wrong is that? So you can now go out and buy yourself, or your client, some friends to become fans of your pages. Advertising Age reports: “The folks at online ad firm uSocial are taking that a step further: Pay them money and they'll make ...