Mindblossom has won first place in the ‘09 Aegis Media North America 3C Awards for its work for Dan Aykroyd’s Crystal Head Vodka.  Winners in Aegis’ internal competition were announced last month, and we thought it to be about time to share the strategy and creative that put us at the head of the class. Please take a look at the storyboard below, then head over to http://crystalheadvodka.com to get the lowdown from Dan Aykroyd himself.

One last thing: We must apologize in advance for any moments of ‘blast!’ caused by a difficulty in getting your hands on a bottle of the crystal-distilled spirit for yourself. ‘Seems a thoughtful mix of strategy, execution, and good old fashioned word of mouth can really do a number on the supply of a finely crafted vodka such as Crystal Head.

I am in the midst of providing indepth training for a client on Twitter. This is a “Get Started Version”. I’ve spent the last 4 hours researching blogs and document sites to provide me with this information. Credits go to Ogilvy for providing the Do’s and Don’ts, plus Socialblog for the tool information. Here’s what I’ve come up with. If you have more info that’s relevant to newbies, please let me know and I’ll add it to this blog post.

Strategic Approach to Using Twitter

Getting Started:

1) Remember to create your profile in Settings:
• Make sure your profile is complete. People decide to follow you based on the richness of your profile.
• Make sure you upload a picture. It’s always nice to know who you’re connecting with.
• Add a website URL or better yet a blog or destination where you can invite conversation.

2) Who to follow:
• Use http://Twellow.com to target the users. This will depend on the account you created and the objective for the account. If it is to sell your product, then target people talking about your company, or products that your company offers.
• Follow your friends first. Then look at their string of followers to determine whom you should follow.
• Use http://grader.twitter.com to determine the top tweeps to follow — these are the influential voices in the twittersphere.

3) What do I tweet?
• Listen first: figure out what people are saying. Is there anything of value you can add? If so chime in.
• Always provide value: is there information that you have first hand that you think would benefit others? Provide the link and let others know.
• Emphasize another person’s tweet: if you think it’s important, then RT (retweet). This not only makes the other person appreciate that you’ve recognized their contribution, it also opens you up to further followers.
• Promote your programs ONLY once you’ve created credibility: This is OK to do once in a while. If others see you have contributed valuable content, then the more likely they will come to your site.

4) Tweeting long URLS: Since you’re constrained to only 140 characters, many times you need to use tinyURLS or similar functions to truncate your destination URL. You can use your client Tweetdeck to shorten URLs before you post. It gives you more room to add some commentary to your post. (more…)

I was intrigued by the following post from Peter Kim’s Reputation Matters. At its core the post makes sense indicating that your online conduct, who you associate yourself with and how you engage in those relationships have a strong bearing on your credibility. I agree that your number of followers is not a correct measure of your credibility but the quality of the relationships you’ve built with your network.

The quote that caught my attention from Peter Kim’s post was: “Thus we require personal interactions to help bridge the trust gap. These consist of content and quality within direct conversation. Recency and frequency matter here which should temper the “monetary”/intangible risk of any action. Behavior bundles in here as well.” In a space where relationships have been traditionally built through honest and authentic interactions, this should ideally be the norm. But we have to realize that this space is changing everyday. Marketers are starting to see the true value of social media and the wealth of brand conversations and opportunities to engage with customers will set the ground for another wave of change.

This leads me to Peter’s response to sponsored posts in which he said, “I believe that monetization leads to loss of objectivity sooner or later.” He referenced David Charbuck’s post entitled “Shooting Fish: Blog Sluts”. I read David’s post and I think he has polarized the view of bloggers. It’s nice to idealize a world where writers/bloggers have integrity and do not, in any way, prostitute themselves for the almighty dollar. The reality is that it happens with the emergence of the blogs. Everyone has forever been trying to figure out the monetization of new media and inevitably 100 ideas will unfold and a handful will be tried. Writing used to be a profession, a craft that required strong skills that were honed overtime. Today’s reality is that everybody and his brother can easily create a blog and can, with the plethora of social tools, spread their own messages to the world. That being said, Social Media 101 has provided some rules about acceptable behaviour.

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