Social Media Promotions Of The Week: 17/05/2013

Every social media promotion in this week’s SMPW has a video: two use a video alongside a larger campaign while one makes clever use of YouTube’s features. In fact, YouTube itself has a promotion out this week for an event they’re holding very soon. Here are the top five:

1. P&G – ‘Thank You Mum’



During the London Olympics last year, consumer goods company Proctor & Gamble ran a very successful campaign encouraging everyone to thank their mums. To celebrate global Mother’s Day on Sunday (though not in the UK), P&G are rereleasing their “Thank you Mum” campaign, starting off with an uplifting video about Maria Shriver and her mother Eunice – the founder of the Special Olympics.

To help promote the video, P&G are promising to donate $1 to the Special Olympics on their Facebook page every time the video is shared, until $50,000 has been donated. At the time of writing the video has been shared over 43,000 times.

To coincide with the campaign, people can tweet motherly advice on Twitter using the hashtag #MomsWisdom.

2. BNP Paribas – #TweetandShoot


To celebrate a successful 40 year partnership with the French Open, BNP Paribas are inviting tennis fans to compete with French tennis ace Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in a Twitter-powered tennis game.

On 23 May, Twitter users will be able to position a ball on a virtual court to aim their shot. The shot will then be encoded into a tweet with the hashtag #TweetandShoot, decoded by a tennis ball machine connected to the internet, then fired into the area of the court the user chose.

Each tweet will be selected at random and then fired at Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who will have to keep his wits about him if he wants to return as many of the randomly processed shots as possible.

3. Volkswagen – Hidden Frame


Volkswagen Brazil has made clever use of YouTube’s pop-up frame preview feature in their new YouTube advert.

Viewers are asked to hover their cursor at a certain point along the videos time line in order to warn the actor talking to the camera of a falling man.

The video advert has been released to promote Volkswagen’s new side assist feature, which helps drivers see objects in the side mirror’s blind spot.

4. UEFA – The Race


On Wednesday, Chelsea F.C. defeated S.L. Benfica in a hard-fought Europa League final. In the run up to the match, European football governing body UEFA decided to challenge two groups of fans – one group Portuguese and one group English – to a race to the Amsterdam Arena where the final was held.

The fans had to display passing, dribbling and technical skill to progress through the various stages of the race, with the S.L. Benfica fans getting their hands on the trophy first. The Race proved not to be a sign of things to come, however, with Bratislav Ivanovic’s injury time goal earning Chelsea the trophy on the night.

5. YouTube – Arnold Pumps You Up For Comedy Week


Next week is YouTube Comedy Week: a seven day long event during which YouTube’s stars will release videos showing the best that they have to offer.

Acts such as The Lonely Island, College Humor, Vince Vaughn, Epic Meal Time and Epic Rap Battles of History will be involved in Comedy Week. The videos will be a variety of skits, live streams and “fan challenges”.

Which is your favourite social media promotion this week?  

New Facebook Timeline Sections Roll Out Worldwide

Facebook has made sections available worldwide, enabling all users to express themselves and share their interests in app-specific boxes on the timeline. Many apps have already taken advantage of the new feature, integrating with sections to provide users with a new way to interact and engage with games, music, movies and much else besides.

Goodreads, Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes have all integrated with sections to enable users to star-rate and categorise books and movies. Sections are tabulated, allowing users to say whether they have read a book or watched a movie, want to do so, or have liked the book/movie on Facebook.

Music apps have also integrated with the new sections feature, so users can now share the songs they listen to and like. Users can also listen to their friends’ favourite songs by clicking on them in the timeline. Facebook believes that sections are better than the now-defunct aggregations, according to the announcement post on the Developers pages:

Sections are […] a more beautiful and lasting way to display your app on timeline compared to aggregations, which we are no longer supporting.

In the announcement post, Facebook also highlights the potential that integrating fitness apps within the timeline could have: friends could motivate one another by sharing fitness regimens. Endomondo, Nike+, Runtastic, and Strava are the app examples given, written above a chart displaying a random user’s weekly running distances.


App developers have the opportunity to be creative with their sections, messing around with tab titles and the content within them. The game Pearl’s Peril, for example, displays a user’s completed levels on the timeline, information similar to that which is shared in the notifications section of the news feed.

At the end of the announcement post, Facebook shares its best practices for app developers looking to take advantage of the new sections feature:

1. Give people a way to add your custom section to timeline: Consider including a URL in your app to give your users a preview of your section and help them decide whether to add it to timeline (see Foursquare example below).
2. Choose the right template for your section: For example, apps with great visual content should use the gallery template to draw people's attention. We also support list and map templates.
3. Focus on quality and completeness before submitting your section for approval: To make the review process simple, submit your section only after making sure your object images and descriptions are complete and look great from the perspective of your users.

According to Facebook’s announcement post, users are already taking full advantage of the new sections feature, adding 200 million items daily. At the time of the posts publication 17 billion songs had been added to music sections via apps or likes.

Do you like Facebook’s new apps sections?       

YouTube Introduces Paid Channels

After months of rumors, YouTube finally introduced a pilot program for paid channels on Thursday.

YouTube will now let a few dozen of popular channels charge viewers a subscription fee of 99 cents or more per month, the company announced in a blog post. Each of these channels will offer two weeks of free viewing before charges kick in and some will provide discounts for those who sign up for an annual subscription.

Some of the YouTube channels that are part of the pilot program include Big Think Mentor, Comedy.TV, PGA Digital Golf and Pets.TV.

"This is just the beginning," YouTube said in the blog post. "We’ll be rolling paid channels out more broadly in the coming weeks as a self-service feature for qualifying partners."

The move comes with relatively little risk for YouTube and the possibility of generating significant revenue by taking a cut of subscription fees and advertisements that air on the channels.

Would you pay to watch videos from your favorite YouTube channels? Share in the comments.

Image via Getty/Lionel Bonaventure

Facebook Updates Its Page Manager App For iOS Devices

Facebook has rebuilt its Page Manager App to make it “faster and easier to use”, according to the download page in the iTunes app store. Facebook has also added photo filtering and stickers to the app. Only the iOS app has been updated thus far, there is no word yet on when Android users will be able to download the new version.

Facebook has made some changes behind the scenes to improve navigation on the app: scrolling through the news feed is faster and more intuitive; photos can be opened and closed quickly with a single downward swipe.

Previously, users could not edit photos using the app, instead they had to apply filters and make changes to photos in Instagram, or another image editing app, before uploading them to their page in the Page Manager app. Now, iPhone and iPad users can edit the photos as soon as they are taken or uploaded to the app, with a similar array of filters to those available in Instagram.

Page administrators can also add stickers and emojis to messages sent using the app. Facebook started using stickers last month, adding them to Facebook Messenger on iOS devices earlier this week– they were already available to Android users.

Have you used stickers yet? What do you think of them?