Has social media killed off the postcard?

I don’t know about you but the news of the demise of the traditional postcard is quite sad, if a little unsurprising. Sending a postcard home was once a staple of the family holiday, letting family know how you were despite knowing they would receive it long after seeing you and your sunburn in person.

Any post that isn’t a bill or junk mail actually makes my day. It shows someone’s gone out of their way to think of you, it has the personal touch so often lost with the internet or a text.

According to a report out last week Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have killed off the novelty of sending a postcard home to loved ones. Surveying 2,000 people, travel firm ebookers found four in ten people no longer send postcards when on holiday.

With the ease of new media and despite high charges for using WAP on your phone abroad, one in two Britons admit to checking and updating social networks or email when on holiday. Despite half of people who check or update social networks while on holiday confessing they think it’s a waste of their time, as many as two thirds admit to spending two hours or more doing so. It seems we can no longer bear to be out of the loop for even a week without feeling disconnected and aloof.

Going for gold with Olympic campaigns

With just under 400 days to go until the London Olympics Games kick-off, marketing activity by the official sponsors have stepped up a gear. Though the majority of us will have to watch the games from the sofa having failed to secure tickets, this hasn’t stopped the marketing machine ramping things up with numerous events and announcements hitting the press in the last few weeks. Here are some campaigns that caught my eye:

Boasting that this will be the most ‘content rich’, and ‘connected’ Olympic games in history, Samsung  has set its sights on making 2012 the ‘Smart Games’. The tech firm is on the hunt for 60 Samsung Mobile Explorers. Each will be given  smartphones and tasked with sharing their own experiences of the Olympics through social media as online ambassadors for the brand.

Similarly, Coca-Cola  is in search of young and inspiring torchbearers for their Future Flames competition. If you have a burning passion and a life-changing story, the judging panel – which includes rapper Dizzee Rascal – can get you on the torch relay.  BA on the other hand are after not one, but three great Britons. Create a pieces of art, film or a menu using the games as inspiration and you can get mentored by Tracey Emin, Heston Blumenthal or Richard E Grant. Not bad.

Given the lead time, it’s understandable that the majority of activity to date has been competition-based.  As we near the opening ceremony,  I can’t wait to see what else the cunning PRs have up their sleeves. Assuming we don’t experience a fiasco on par with the ticket allocations, I’m sure there’ll be more to come.

Connected Devices take over the World!

Future-gazing usually ends up with visions of everyone doing the shopping in flying cars or taking a holiday on the Moon with their robo-dog. Never turns out that way but a vision of a world dominated by tiny intelligent machines that know everything about you and are constantly talking with one another is coming true or so Cisco would have us believe.

Their  recent survey caught my eye because it seems that by 2015 there will be more Internet connected devices on the planet than people. In fact, 15 billion devices or twice the world’s human population. We’re going to be outnumbered by devices in a way that the car or the TV never achieved (though there are some techy obstacles like a looming shortage of IP addresses that we need to fix)

And this forecast of being surrounded by connected devices  seems rooted in reality. Mobiles are almost an additional body part, never leaving our grasp and more likely to be in our hand than our pocket. We constantly want to touch them and check our connectivity more often than we actually ever check our pulse rate.

From a communications perspective, the opportunities to engage with people seem limitless because we are so connected.

But then again the fact that we’re living with so much readily available connectivity intensifies the need for communications that are highly personal and stand out from the crowd.

Mobile: the next big thing in Marketing and PR

The number of people accessing the internet via mobile devices may reach 1 billion by 2014, meaning mobile will overtake the PC as the most popular way to get on the Web. At the same time, more users will be consuming mobile apps with the mobile app market reaching $8.3 billion in 2014 compared to $3.8 billion forecast for this year.

This makes thinking about the marketing opportunities of mobile and mobile apps all the more pressing and exciting. Many brands are already incorporating mobile apps into their marketing and PR campaigns. Deodorant brand Lynx has launched a mobile app which encourages consumers to share their party experiences with selected friends by streamlining their social media activity in one place. The application will be promoted through the company Facebook page, YouTube channel and a dedicated website and will act as a media channel for future brand and marketing campaigns.

What’s significant about this example is how it makes the most of how the mobile platform allows marketers and PR professionals to interact with consumers regardless of time and location. The increase in mobile internet usage is a great opportunity for brands to engage consumers through social networks, while using dedicated apps and location-based websites to make their messages relevant to consumers. Additionally, mobile apps can be used to create innovative, interactive and engaging forms of content using specific Smartphone functionalities such as multi-touch navigation, cameras, GPS, etc.

Not surprisingly brands and media companies are focusing significant efforts on tapping into the mobile platform. In the era of mobility and social networking, mobile devices will have a profound impact on how marketers and PR professionals communicate with their target audiences.

Social Media Revolutions?

The roll call of dictatorships falling (or tottering dangerously in the case of Gaddafi today) is exhilarating and continues to dominate the news agenda and front pages (even pushing the NZ earthquake off the front pages which is striking because this event is so tragic and much closer to home with the  UK’s  ties to New Zealand).

What’s also interesting is watching how commentators are arguing over the real role of social media and social networks in triggering and driving these mass movements that have been so unexpected. Today’s UK Guardianlooks at this issue in depth and makes the point that we are seeing events unfold through ordinary people’s   footage posted on Facebook et al. This is a vivid feature of what’s going on and links back to how some many media events now are told through social media (remember the 7/7 tube bombing footage). But is social media running or simply recording the revolution?

We had some inkling that this could happen when Twitter was lauded as enabling last year’s Green Revolution in Iran over the disputed election. What’s different this time is that protests haven’t been extinguished as viciously as they were in Iran. Personally, while I credit the powerful role that social media and the Internet has played recently, it still seems to me that successful protests like these depend on the sheer physical bravery of citizens who are no longer willing to be cruelly oppressed and the willingness of powerful components of the state apparatus – the army, police, national TV media –  to not take part in the repression e.g. look at how the departure of Mubarakwas hastened by the reluctance of the army to intervene on his behalf. That latter is probably the most critical factor as has been the case in other popular uprising (e.g. the break up of the Soviet Bloc in the pre-web era)

So what’s this got to do with PR?  Other than how a poor response to getting Brits home  has been a PR crisis for the first PR man to be prime minster,  it is a  reality check about what is happening on so many levels. Social media is becoming more woven into people’s lives globally(and not simply in the West) and  the influence of publishing personal content online can be powerful when topical and unique. But it also tells us how social media is a tool not a panacea for solving all of our problems.  As in revolutions, social media works best in PR when done in conjunction with other tools and disciplines. And when you put in a lot of hard work and slog.