News and blog

We know that millions people now have a Facebook account – an average of one million new users sign up each month in the UK. We know too that there are 175 million registered Twitter accounts, and that Google+ has already become the fastest growing social network. But if you’re not quite sure where on earth this is all heading, then you need our new Grab-a-Byte series.

In an attempt to engage with a core element of its market – namely the teens/early twenties demographic – Phones4U serves as an excellent example of how Facebook can drive deeper social engagement with consumers.

Using the ‘Poll’ ad format, Phones4U were able to encourage users of Facebook to nominate a musical hero. By clicking on the advert the consumer was directed to the brand’s Facebook profile page, where they were able to participate in the campaign. This was the first phase of the campaign, and when all the votes were counted up, it was Dizzee Rascal who stood on top.

The 21st of October saw Madhouse host the latest in its popular best practice seminar programme, with delegates from some of the region’s most recognisable brands in attendance.

The quality of the welcome pastries, as always, was only outshone by the quality of the speakers. The hot topic for this event? Getting Twitter and LinkedIn to work for your business. An area of massive potential, massive growth and, some would argue, massive misunderstanding.

But hey, that’s why we’re here, and that’s the whole point of our seminars – to deliver some sanity to clients, and help them define a clear strategy for the medium. The seminar is, of course, only as good as the content the speakers deliver, and we were fortunate enough to have two excellent sessions last Thursday.

Back in July we held the very first Madhouse best practice seminar on social media, and the response was phenomenal. As an integrated agency using social media for the benefit of our clients, we called on two industry specialists to give us their views on how social media can work for business.

My god, it’s full of stars… 

I wasn’t sure what to title our latest blog, so why did I plump for the above? Well we all know how Carlsberg’s famous strapline goes, and as we at Madhouse hosted our first free best practice seminar earlier this month, it was a phrase that I couldn’t help bringing to mind.

Transparency. Never a bad thing in my book. Take the relationship between agency and client: the work that we produce is driven by the client’s brief. If the client isn’t clear and concise in their statement of requirements/goals, then it is reflected in the end result. Things can be….confused.

I recently attended SAScon in Manchester – that’s the Search, Analytics and Social Media Conference – and while I was there, I listened to an interesting presentation by Bruce Daisley from YouTube.

Although it was supposed to be a fairly neutral look at the future of video on the internet, Bruce did a fairly slick sales job about YouTube and the expanding list of advertising opportunities on that site.