Humanisng a Brand

Humanising a brand is a way of endearing people to your company. It’s easier said than done but worth it. Building a brand personality takes effort and finding one that suits your overall company message requires careful consideration.

Brand personality isn’t just what you say it’s about your style and how you present yourself to the world. How you interact should reflect what your brand values. If you haven’t properly considered what your brand’s voice is, then read on.

Creating An Identity

If you could describe your business in half a dozen words, what would they be? Reliable? Creative? Relaxed? Quirky? Serious? Helpful? This will help to develop your tone of voice and how you communicate. A consistent tone of voice will help your customers to get an idea of the of culture of your business. Your tone of voice is just as important as any other part of the branding process.

What’s The Tone Of Your Voice?

The style of your company will help shape the brand tone voice. Is it going to be serious and to the point? Or will you be using fun and colourful language to sell your product?

There are very few occasions when a serious tone is required, but this will depend upon the industry. There will always be an opportunity for personality and fun in your Twitter interactions. One great example of this is by @KiaUK. Dealing with a product like cars, you could be easily forgiven for thinking they would just focus on what they’re selling, instead, as a tweeting car the brand has an opportunity to be playfully provocative.

How Do You Communicate

How you communicate with your audience is the key to building up a strong relationship. Depending on the above, your replies and tweets will fit in with the tone you’ve developed so you could give either serious replies, witty responses or a balance between the two.

Merlin’s Plumpy Nut Challenge is the first ever fundraising campaign designed to leverage and engage the spirit of sharing on Twitter. It enabled Merlin to penetrate a completely fresh market of the notoriously difficult 21-35 year olds. It shattered two myths at the same time; that social media cannot be used to raise money directly and that cold fundraising can’t produce a high ROI or net income.

The campaign was based around giving Twitter a simple idea that would give them a fun, easy way to engage with a serious cause which was getting less and less media – the East Africa Food Crisis.

The proposition was simple. Put yourselves in the shoes of a malnourished child for just 1 day by eating nothing but Plumpy Nut, raise just £50, save a life. Publish great content , then tell your followers and get them to do the same.

By keeping the challenge Twitter-centric, Merlin created a highly active and engaged community of fundraisers, engendering an extremely strong ‘challenger-get-challenger’ mentality. By giving the tweeters a target, we enabled an amazingly diverse group to come together and keep working even once their challenge had been done.

Merlin and Bulletsocial seeded the campaign by identifying key Twitter influencers early on in the planning to ensure they felt they had some responsibility and ownership of making the Plumpy Nut Challenge a success. This meant they did the hard work themselves and encouraged others to do the same – creating high quality fun content, starting conversations and spreading the word as far as possible.

The Twitter tone of voice was completely changed from a formal, worthy voice to a more friendly and cheeky one – a completely new approach for charity sector.

The campaign raised £30,000 and reached over 1 million Twitter accounts.

Bulletsocial’s and Merlin’s innovation of using Twitter and empowering supporters to individually shape and spread a simple concept should be something all charities can take away from this. Ceding control is always an extremely risky thing for charities to do, but the Plumpy Nut Challenge has proved that the right messaging and management can minimise risk and allow greater engagement.

One American business that’s been a bit more creative with its Foursquare incentives, is Talia’s Tuscan Table in Florida. The restaurant offers its customers a table reservation and permanent car parking space to whoever is Mayor. Not a bad perk!

I’m sure a lot of brands and businesses currently on Foursquare could be a bit more original and entice new and existing Foursquare users with a great incentive like the one mentioned above.

What would you offer if it was your business….?

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5934198/this-is-the-best-foursquare-perk-to-date

Visitnorway Tunnel Travel from Matei Curtasu on Vimeo.

As shown in the video above, visitnorway.com are advertising the beautifully, inviting landscape in an interesting medium.

Commuting the same route every day is exhausting and repetitive, but visitnorway.com are entertaining people whilst riding the subway. With every screen perfectly aligned to each passenger window, it creates an enjoyable animation.

Gone are the days of simple posters and billboards!

Here at Bullet, we have a real appreciation for interesting ads that show off great new inventions that make our lives a lot easier and hassle free. This new tongue-in-cheek ad is for the Barclaycard PayTag; the new way to turn any mobile into a contactless way to make an easy, secure payment. The days of fumbling for cash is over- it is right there when you need it most. Just make sure you don’t lose your mobile!

With Glastonbury not going ahead this year and several other UK festivals cancelled, many Brits are planning to take their annual festival trip abroad. Due to the increasing number of British Nationals now opting to combine a holiday with a festival in the sun, Bullet has worked with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to produce a checklist to ensure their trip is fun and trouble free. The main points in the checklist include:

Reminding festivalgoers to take out travel insurance before they depart – ensuring they are fully covered for unexpected losses or expenses (such as missed flights). It won’t cost the earth and will give them peace of mind while they are away.

Keeping your passport safe on holiday – ideally behind lock and key, or on you securely. A separate photocopy with all your passport details should also be kept or stored online using a secure data site such as an e-safe. In the event that your passport is either lost or stolen – contact the local police immediately.

People should be aware of bag or mobile snatchers, especially in campsites, on the beach, public transport, restaurants, cafes and at the festival. Any losses of valuables should be reported to the police and don’t forget to ask for a written police report.

Know your limits with drink and drugs. Penalties for drug possession can be severe, with heavy fines or imprisonment. Never carry anything through customs for anyone else.

Visas – find out in advance what’s required for your trip. Advice is available for every country in the advice by country section on the FCO website www.fco.gov.uk/travel

Advising Brits travelling anywhere in the European Union that they can call the local emergency services (ambulance, police and fire brigade) by dialing 112 from any mobile or landline.

It’s worth spending a few moments sorting out holiday plans now. IF something goes wrong… It can be not only expensive but can follow you back home. By making these simple preparations, you’ll be able to sit back and wait for the fun to begin!

For additional details and country specific information, visit the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website www.fco.gov.uk/travel

Alternatively, if you’d like to download your own copy please visit www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/your-trip/festivals

Good news for Facebook users as it recently announced (24/5/12) a new application for the iPhone and iPod Touch called Facebook Camera, which makes it much easier to take pictures and share them.

Dirk Stoop, a Facebook product manager for photos, said that the app was much faster than the current Facebook app for Apple’s iOS, and that it puts photos at the center of the experience.

“We can basically show you more photos on the app, so we can make a more immersive experience around your photos,” Dirk said. “On the side of publishing these photos, Facebook Camera lets you upload much higher resolution photos at up to 2,048 by 2,048 pixels wide.” The traditional Facebook application uploads lower-resolution pictures. The app will also uses Instagam styled photo filters to Facebook.

Facebook Camera has filters and tools for cropping and straightening you pics. “They are stylistic in nature, they are not just enhancements,” Mr Stoop added: “We spent a lot of time making the app very fast. The whole viewing experience is faster. The app launches really fast and it scrolls like butter.”

It’s just weeks after Facebook announced it was buying Instagram. With 40 million users Instagram is someway behind Facebook and it’s 900 million users. The filters in Facebook Camera were developed by Facebook and are not taken from Instagram. Derick Mains, a spokesman for Facebook, said “the company chose to highlight photos in the application after seeing people share enormous numbers of photos on Facebook and spend a lot of time interacting with them.”

We certainly think it’s a much faster Facebook experience on the iPhone and it’s a long time overdue. It makes browsing and sharing pictures much easier and It’s also a refreshing change to the increasing cluttered and slow traditional Facebook app. What do you think of it? Have you seen any ads on it yet? It’s available at the app store now and it’s free.

We’re searching for an experienced account manager/ senior account manager to join one of our biggest teams. Ideally you’ll have experience in partnerships, digital & social within the travel industry or public sector.

This is a busy team, a lot of time is spent with the client and other businesses. You will need to be happy presenting to and negotiating with a wide range of big organisations.  Back in the office you’ll be managing a team, reporting to one of Bullet’s directors.

Please get in touch if this role excites you, we’d love to meet you and explain a bit more about the job…

All candidates please send your CVs to amy@hellobullet.com

In a bid to attract a younger audience Peugeot has launched a video clip featuring ‘Nonstop’ performer Scott dancing to a new track called Feel the Love by Rudimental.

The video shows Scott performing body popping, robotics and other extraordinary dance steps. At times his dancing looks unreal, as if his legs belong to somebody else, the ‘slow-motion’ moves almost look computer animated. The track is also a great tune and sure to be a hit this Summer.

As you admire Scott’s dancing he slowly wriggles and twists past a parked 208 model. He completes the dance by a wall with the strap-line for Peugeot’s global campaign for 208, ‘Let Your Body Drive’. The clip is already going viral amassing around 260k views in just a few days.

Peugeot will support the campaign further with a roadshow visiting seven UK shopping centres, including London’s Westfield, Bristol’s Cabot Circus and Birmingham’s Bullring. People will also be able to visit a dedicated YouTube page and upload their own ‘Bodydrive’ video for a chance win a trip for seven to Ibiza. The competition will run from 25 April to the end of June, so start practising.

Nick Crossley, Brand Advertising, Partnership and Sponsorship manager at Peugeot, said: ” The Bodydrive campaign complements the interactive nature of the 208, from the dashboard to the integral interior design of the vehicle, which is deceptively spacious.”

The 208 goes on sale in the UK in June.