Clik here to view.
Becoming South By Southwest: Q&A with SXSW Interactive Director Hugh Forrest
SXSW Interactive is heading into its 20th year. How did the world’s biggest digital media conference evolve out of a small-town music festival? We started in 1994 and as context, music started in 1987....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hashtag Marketing: How Brands Are Using Hashtags to Engage Across Platforms
#TheBasics Budweiser used a hashtag campaign to name the newest edition to its herd of Clydesdales. A hashtag is a simple way for people to follow a specific topic or trend on Twitter, Instagram,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Vine: A Great Teaching Tool for Brands
Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams appearing in a viral Vine video. Odds are you’ve seen a Vine video even if you haven’t heard of Twitter’s six-second video app. After the shocking penultimate...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Next Frontier of Social TV
Image by ralphbijker via Flickr. We’ve been hearing about the rise of “social TV” for years. But with Twitter’s acquisition of leading social TV analytics company Bluefin Labs in February, and the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inside Scoble’s Starfish
Robert Scoble is one of the world’s leading evangelists of all things digital. Previously with Microsoft, Scoble has also worked with Fast Company among others. He is perhaps best known as a blogger:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Engagement Checkup: Airlines on Twitter
Like everything else on Twitter, the results are inconsistent. Air Alaska, Jet Blue and Southwest are tweeting and re-tweeting their wings off, but some of their fiercest competitors have yet to upload...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When the Media is the Message
©istockphoto.com / Emrah Türüdü What do we mean when we talk about media today? I think when we talk about “media” today, the word that normally follows it is “fragmentation.” There was a point when...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Social Media and Travel Were Made for Each Other
©istockphoto.com/Simon Oxley Travel is a social activity. You meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet. On a business trip, you hang out at your hotel bar and meet others doing the same thing. You...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Engagement Checkup: This Week on Twitter
This week on Twitter, Air New Zealand (@flyairnz) receives major kudos for two videos that have gone viral on YouTube. The first is a bare naked take on the aircraft safety video, in which the cabin...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Social Media Stardom
©istockphoto.com/Katrina Brown Social media has blurred the lines between marketing and friend-making. Consider the wording that social networking sites use. When you hook up with someone on LinkedIn...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Engagement Checkup: Roger Smith Hotel
Brian Simpson and Adam Wallace at the 140 Conference in LA by CC Chapman via Flickr I met Adam Wallace and Brian Simpson at the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, and the story of our introduction also tells...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Like a Virgin: Live-Tweeting Sir Richard Branson
Here is our Twitter stream from the event (in reverse chronological order, of course): For the full feed, follow us on Twitter. Here is our iPhone “tweetphoto” shot from within the 900-plus audience:
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chasing Kevin Smith: Q&A with Southwest Airlines’ Christi Day
The Kevin Smith affair generated tons of media coverage, much of which wasn’t very kind to Southwest. What was the biggest lesson of that experience? I think there were several lessons learned here....
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Airlines Handled the Ash Cloud – Engagement Checkup
Photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video via flickr Inform In tense, time-sensitive circumstances travellers turn to social media for information. The most effective tweets and status updates read like...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Speaking through the Web: Q&A with Roger Ebert – Part II
Editor’s note: Roger Ebert died in Chicago on April 4, 2013. He was 70. You were just honoured with the Webby Award as “Person of the Year,” partly for your innovative Ebert Club venture. Basically,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brazilian Brands Love the Web
What if you could design your own pizza, tweet the recipe, and then order it in from your local Pizza Hut? Or close the deal on a new condo through an iPhone application? These are just two clever ways...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Five Lessons from Social Media Week L.A.
Stories are necessary (but not sufficient) During one panel, Zach Behrens, editor of LAist.com, said the following: Stories have a point, conversations don’t always, and that’s why social media needs...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Freeing the Customer with VRM: Q&A with Doc Searls – Part I
Photo by mary hodder via flickr Let’s start with the basic question: What is VRM and why should businesses and marketers care about it? VRM is Vendor Relationship Management. It’s the customer-side...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Airlines on Twitter: Engagement Checkup
Over the course of the last year, incidents such as Southwest Airlines’ Kevin Smith fiasco, and the ominous Icelandic ash cloud have elevated branded tweeting from a viable marketing helping hand to...
View ArticleBooks, Bags and BRAINS: Best of the Web – Vol. 15
Branded Content + Entertainment Museums, retailers and airlines bring guerilla marketing into the social savvy aughts: Guerrilla Marketing in 2010. Edelman’s Carole Cone warns marketers that...
View ArticleTravel Gets Touchy: Best of the Web – Vol. 16
We’re big airline geeks here at Sparksheet and the TSA debacle has been on our radar all week. The media are abuzz over the new X-Ray scanners, speculating on what some travellers claim is an invasion...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fans, Brands and Fake Don Draper: TV Shows on Twitter
Is this tweeting ad executive really Mad Men’s Don Draper? Is this “old white man” really Pierce Hawthorne from Community? How about this one? The rise of Twitter has created a marketing opportunity...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In a Mobile World: Best of the Web – Vol. 20
The Mobile World Congress 2011 took place this week in Barcelona, featuring keynote speakers like Sir Martin Sorrell and showcasing some the world’s most innovative mobile technologies. With more than...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SXSW Flashback: The Year Twitter Took Off
As I look forward to discovering what new technologies and trends this year’s South by Southwest will usher in, I can’t help but think back on SXSW “game changers” of years past. I think it’s fair to...
View ArticleBranded Domains, iCloud and Angry Birds: Best of the Web
In the news Last week at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, Steve Jobs introduced the long-awaited iCloud, the free service that will allow users to seamlessly (and cordlessly) sync their Apple...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Five Lessons From 140conf
Ann Curry @140Conf - Image via Flickr: bjmccray You’d think these things would be obsolete by now. But, as I theorized on the 140conf stage in front of 800-plus people (not to mention the thousands who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Twitter’s Favourite News Anchor: Video Q&A with NBC’s Ann Curry
Ann Curry @140conf - Image by bjmccray via Flickr Ann Curry takes her role as anchor to heart. Curry believes that television news anchors are responsible for holding down the journalistic principles...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What’s Trending
Here at Sparksheet we are constantly scanning our Twitter and RSS feeds for the most relevant content, media and marketing stories. Every day we come across tweets that pique our interest – articles,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading it for the Tweets: Q&A with Playboy Social Media Director Matt Gibbs
How do you maintain Playboy’s unique voice, outlook and culture across so many disparate media, from print and video, to Facebook and Twitter? It’s a challenge to ensure that all of our mouthpieces...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sparksheet Wins Record-Smashing Seven COPAs
Sparksheet Editor Dan Levy, Creative Director Charles Lim and Community Manager Joey Tanny Maybe it’s our creative director’s near-obsessive attention to detail. Maybe it’s the tsunami of tweets our...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Finding the Story: Five Lessons from StoryWorld 2011
It was Jeff Gomez, steward of such “story worlds” as Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean and Coke’s Open Happiness, who drew the biggest cheers at the two-day StoryWorld Conference + Expo. “What a relief...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mainstream Media Falling Short on Twitter: New Study
Twitter, the world’s most popular micro-blogging site, has been touted as a new form of interactive journalism; news can be broken anytime, anywhere, by anyone – so long as the stories are under 140...
View ArticleThe Muppets’ Branded Entertainment Genius
An award-winning music video, appearances on Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, millions of YouTube views and Twitter dominance – no, it’s not Justin Bieber. It’s the Muppets. The Jim...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brand Fiction Gone Mad: Video Q&A with Helen Klein Ross
Helen Klein Ross established herself as a writer and creative director at top ad agencies like FCB and Ogilvy, but in the last five years she’s reinvented herself as a social media renegade. In 2007...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Social Media Changed the Super Bowl
As someone who used to work at a sports bar, I understand the chaos that occurs during the Super Bowl. I had the pleasure of working at Buffalo Wild Wings as a waitress in Chicago in 2007 when the...
View ArticleSuper Bowl Ad Roundup
Super Bowl commercials have always been hyped, but these days brands are looking beyond TV to reach American football fans before, during, and after the biggest sports event of the year. From pre-game...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brand Carnival: Marketing Mardi Gras from New Orleans to Rio
A samba school dancer at Rio Carnival 2012. Image by Leandro Neumann Ciuffo, via Flickr Booze, bunda and bright shiny objects. That’s modern-day Mardi Gras in a nutshell. Theologically, the celebration...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Building a Social Business
Image via blog.spoongraphics.co.uk Something that has stuck with me is an idea from one of Amber Naslund’s webinars that I attended last year. Why are many big brands so uncomfortable with letting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Return on Influence: The Rise of the Citizen Influencer
I have become a number. And if you are even slightly active on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you have become a number too, at least in the eyes of a new breed of influence...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why the C-Suite Should Embrace Social Media
It comes as no surprise that, according to a recent survey, nearly all marketing decision-makers are aware of the importance of social media in their branding efforts. What’s more interesting is that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Newsjacking: How Brands Can Own the Story
Newsjacking lets brands leverage news by inserting themselves into the story. Image by Steve Harwood via Flickr. As journalists scramble to cover breaking news, the basic facts of a story –...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Star Trek’s Original Sulu Became Internet Famous
It started, of course, with science fiction fans, especially longtime Trekkies who were happy to experience some kind of regular contact with Mr. Sulu. I owe my career to these fans, and I have never...
View Article
