The beauty of social media, this shows it’s true granular potential:

between WESC and Slam City Skates, at Slam City Skates 43 Carnaby Street, London, W1F 7EA:

Hermes International have reported an 8.5% rise in 2009 revenue, due to an end of year increase in sales of hand-stitched handbags and silk scarves.

2009 revenue has been reported at EUR1.91 billion, the 2008 figure was EUR1.76 billion.

Hopefully an sign that the recession is coming to an end?

Findings from Shareemail by Pew Internet has shown teens and young adults are blogging less and using social networking sites more, with the exception of Twitter.
2,253 American adults and 800 U.S. teens were surveyed, to find out how they use the internet, which gadgets they own, and which social media tools they use the most.
Who’s Online

The research showed interesting trends such as:
- males are more likely to own a cell phone
- income dramatically affects computer ownership but not cell phone ownership
What they aren’t doing much of, though, is blogging and tweeting.
The study finds that blogging has dramatically decreased with the teen audience, 2006 28% of teens were blogging, were as now it’s only 14%. The report found that lower income households (under $50,000) blogged more than higher income households. This trend would, I imagine, be due to Facebook and Twitter offering easier platforms and connectivity to tell your pals what you are up to. A number of brands should be aware of the next point from the study, teens don’t tweet! Stop the press, yep check the figures out below:

The research highlights that teens love to be online, but don’t create content, due to time or possibly life experience. They are consumers and not creators, so in terms of communicating and harnessing this audience online, it’s key to push messages and create content for them online not necessarily adopt them as publishers or bloggers.

I’ve been told by one of my most esteemed colleagues to make the blog slightly more light hearted, so here’s a post on something I saw recently that I liked very much, a foot rest for cyclists in the city of Copenhagen – beats trying to rest your foot on a bollard or traffic cone

Was running through one of my old blogs and found a post entitled ‘Spell with Flickr’, completely forgot about this, guess as I posted it back in 2007, it’s great if you’re a fan of typography:
http://metaatem.net/words/

So there’s been Bentley and Breitling, Aston Martin and Jaeger Le Coultre, Taylor and Burton and now there is Lego and Muji………..

This one has slipped through the net, as I posted this video seeing that I’m a fan of Beck, but also this video it’s brilliant – plus there’s some nice product placement with Charlotte Gainsbourg wearing a Lacoste tennis outfit

Charlotte Gainsbourg – Heaven Can Wait from Charlotte Gainsbourg on Vimeo.

With the code implanted in the tongue, Adidas have created a virtual 3-D world that can be accessed using a future line of five men’s sneakers. The project presents 3 games through AR, one based on music, one on Star Wars and one a skating game.

I believe AR has the potential to create cost effective luxury, as mentioned in the piece I wrote on the 16th Nov luxury is now about a unique and personalised experience, something that very limited numbers have access to, AR offers this in abundance – the potential personalised shopping experience in Liberties collating previous purchase and research information (linked to behavioural targeting within the Liberties site and the dwell times identified through AR whilst in store) to potential Nike tie Ups with artists that create limited editions only to be seen using AR.

As mentioned AR offers cost effective exclusivity maintaining or creating a brands luxury and high end appeal, massive amounts of buzz, as in the case of the potential artist and trainer tie up where the concept could be one in a hundred are limited edition, but only your webcam will tell you and for the store the potential to up sell without the overheads of one sales assistant to one consumer, leveraging knowledge not only from previous purchases but from research made by the consumer on the stores website – all in all we like AR.

In EConsultancy and Big Mouth Media’s most recent “Social Media and Online PR Report,” 50% of companies surveyed said that they had directly contacted those within social media that had given their brand a bashing. Interestingly the survey showed that after this solution, the second most popular way to keep their brand seen in a positive light was ultimately to improve products and services, demonstrating just how powerful the collective voice is online to shaping consumer experience.

The research also showed that one area that was lacking was for brands to create their own content to offset negative consumer opinions, with only 12% of companies engaging in this solution. With brands having so much to talk about, surely this is an easy win for companies?

The research highlighted that Twitter was used to monitor brand sentiment, however Tweets from brands were used more widely as a tool for publicising new content e.g. product, service e.t.c.
A quarter of brands surveyed said that they used the micro blogging service to gather information and for customer service, an area that I feel has a huge amount of potential, especially when recruiting for and announcing winners of brand led competitions.

What is a concern is that more than 20% of the companies surveyed said that the risk of negative brand sentiment was a major influence in not creating more effective social media engagement. Surely the rewards from engaging with social media heavily well outweigh not? With benefits including; creating positive brand sentiment, SEO efficiency, audience segmentation, sentiment segmentation to name just a few, engaging with social media offers a brand so many more rewards and even if a brand isn’t engaging heavily negative views can still be aired, with the power of the collective voice as mentioned in paragraph one if you can’t beat them then you might as well join them.