Tagged: social media

October 5, 2012

#15again

At Amnesia, we like to think we’re pretty in the know when it comes to things digital. In walks in a 15-year-old who couldn’t imagine images without hashtags and scoffs at our ignorance to the meaning of tbh.

“To be honest…cheh”

Rachel doesn’t remember a time before the Internet, or for that matter before social media, and admits that her generation’s relationship to it borders addiction and displays the traits of narcissism.

Take ‘Likes for Likes’ as an example. These are Facebook posts which bait ‘likes’ in return for words of praise (or sometimes less kind words) in the form of wall posts from the post’s publisher.

‘Likes for Likes’: Like baiting for compliments

Or albums dedicated to self portraits, more often than not girls pouting or posing in their bikinis, all with the hope of attracting that all important ‘like’.

But is it addiction or narcissism if it’s the norm?

Sure, for us Gen-Y’s (we’re getting old now people) posting ‘selfies’ with the expectation of attracting thousands of likes and accumulating friends like they were going out of fashion, is behaviour that is not only foreign but fanatical.

Yet can we truly label this up and coming generation narcissistic without performing some due introspection?

I’m pretty sure the last time I checked, within my increasingly brand dominated newsfeed, my friends were posting albums of weddings, baby pics, Eiffel Tower shots and ‘pets doing cute things’. Sure these images aren’t likely to attract thousands of likes, but if not for the sake of attention than what?

Rachel's presentation — Rachel teaching us a thing or two about social media use in Gen Z

Saying we have a generation coming through that is narcissistic is not only crediting the technologies they use but is a form of shifting the blame otherwise known as technological determinism.

Technological determinism tells us that it is technology that drives social change, not the other way around. I have never been a huge fan of this theory, as I’d like to think that humans are autonomous beings that have the capacity to govern their own social change and develop technologies depending on their changing needs.

Either way, there is a stark difference in the use of social media between generations and whether this is simply a question of maturity, we would be silly to shun it or deem it deplorable without taking the opportunity to learn something new.

Like Snapchat! Woah, where did that app come from? According to Rachel, it’s what all the cool kids are using and we’re desperately behind with the times.

Snapchat taps in on the image sharing phenomenon but rather than being another image archive, this app allows a person to take and send a picture and decide how long it is visible by the person who receives it. After a maximum of 10 seconds, the picture disappears and can’t be seen again.

snapchat-2 — Snapchat: Honest communication

My natural thought process landed on the more x-rated possibilities this app affords.

And despite the mainstream media’s ‘sexting’ accusations, co-founder Evan Spiegel defends his app as being just another form of communication.

Hmmmm. Riiiight.

Sexting aside, at Amnesia we jumped on it like a fat kid in a candy store and shared our new found wisdom to our relatively small pool of friends.

Rachel’s generation is still very young and, online or offline, is only beginning to mark its territory on society.

If there’s one thing we have in common though, Rachel put it nicely:

“I don’t like brands on Facebook unless there’s something in it for me.”

True story bro.

By Kristie Beattie

@KristieBeattie

September 9, 2011

A little Google+ experiment

A Google+ experiment where you can meet some of Australia’s most provocative characters, just add them your circles.

December 21, 2010

What can Christmas lights in sequence to music teach us about social objects?

We here at Amnesia Razorfish talk about the value of social objects when looking at how can brands can enter social media. What’s a social object you ask? Anything that people feel compelled to share in a digital landscape. Photos, games, jokes, songs, videos.. and the holy grail, memes.

What binds all of these ‘objects’ together is the simple proposition that the content appealed to someone enough to motivate them to want to share it with their friends. Whether this is because it made that person laugh, cry, revere or repel, it triggered an emotion that caused an effect – they passed it on.

But finding the key to understanding what triggers people to want to pass content on is difficult and takes considered insight. Most brands will fail in their attempts to ‘make something go viral’ and even believe that because they didn’t get 1 million hits on YouTube with that shiny new TVC, that social media isn’t a worthwhile platform for them or for their marketing budgets.

But there are a few basic rules in successful content. And as ’tis the season for all things Christmas (and today being my last day of working in 2010) I wanted to share some fantastic pieces of ‘viral’ content that have garnered the magical seven-figure views.

This magical Christmas lights video is currently sitting on 8,183,000 views. Pretty crazy eh?

Slayer (heavy metal) meets sequenced lights. Rad. And it’s appealed to 1,587,000 people.

It’s pretty slick, but still obviously a ‘home-made job’, but 1,641,000 people watched it.

Because you can’t blog about memes without a LOLcat, this one just makes it in. Sitting at 3,757,000 views, it’s got legs (or is that fur?).

So I’ll leave you with a challenge to find and share your favourite Christmas videos. And have a very Merry Christmas, and a safe and Happy New Year!

~ Karalee Evans, Social Strategy Manager x

October 18, 2010

We're now a record label!

We’ve seen how digital and social media, and specifically earned platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, can propel an unsigned artist into the mainstream of music success.

People like Lily Allen (famous after being discovered on MySpace), Justin Bieber (discovered on YouTube in what is debatably the worst example of YouTube’s possibilities), and even Lady Gaga who was discovered on YouTube and MySpace Music, represent a fundamental shift in how we are selecting popular artists and musicians.

Rather than the traditional push method where ‘Record Labels’ would pick and choose artists based on ‘marketability’ and their own industry agendas, we’re seeing a transition to a pull method. We’re self-selecting as an audience, and determining who will fill our iPods and PCs.

When you consider that social media is underpinned by two pillars: content curation and collaboration, it seems a natural platform for music and ‘stars’ to snowball into popular culture. As Andy Warhol once so famously said “”In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” …Perhaps the new paradigm of this is “in social media, everyone could be world-famous”

The role of social media and music

We are publishers by our very nature, collaborating with one another as peers to appeal to our inherent need for fame and recognition. With social media, though, we have gained the tools that have the potential to scale our peer-level communications to a truly mass-market. And music is by its nature a social experience, binding people together with common emotions and values.

In what is perhaps the natural iteration of this, Razorfish in the US has stepped into the role of quasi-record label by forming a strategic partnership with an unsigned artist, AM.

David Deal, Vice President of Marketing at Razorfish, explained:

“How does an emerging indie artist in the dysfunctional music industry find an audience anymore?

My employer Razorfish is tackling that challenge through an unusual co-branding relationship with indie musician AM, which sees Razorfish playing the role of quasi-record label, concert promoter, and DJ. And so far we are having a lot of fun while building our brand with a creative and smart musician.

“We’re intrigued by the challenge of helping a promising artist find a national audience given how the traditional recording industry distribution model is broken,” said David Deal, vice president of marketing for Razorfish and the would-be A&R man guiding the agency’s partnership with AM. And if Razorfish or any of its clients can earn cachet through association with an up-and-coming artist, so much the better.”

What interests me is the idea that the traditional recording industry distribution model is broken.

Razorfish US have demonstrated that digital, and specifically social media, can play a critical role in bringing music to a mass audience. But for me, it’s a question of what comes first: the lagging of traditional record labels in their push model, or the growing prominence of the push model by the socially-connected. And further, how do you monetize this?

YouTube and music

Earlier this year, Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter, stated that Lady Gaga “create (s) music videos for YouTube.”

When you look at some of the statistics with video views on YouTube (Bieber’s catalyst video achieved 55 millions views), it does make sense for artists to create their content specifically for social media.

Even Susan Boyle, the unlikely hit sensation of 2009, has demonstrated the value of YouTube in achieving success. Yes, she used the reality TV platform to position herself in-front of a National audience, but it was the ‘cloud’ that really propelled her into success. Her audition video saw more than 100 million views in two weeks. A social movement grew, seeing her favoured to take out the title of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ winner (she came runner-up).

Yet despite the massive amount of exposure, and social currency, Susan is purportedly still ‘poor’, with sales figures of her records disappointing.

Indeed, the question of revenue remains; how do you leverage the social popularity of a ‘digital artist’ and generate offline record sales. iTunes, and indeed other music-sharing platforms, are surely the key?

A digital advertising agency and sustainable music: the future?

But what if the revenue aspect of music wasn’t up to ‘traditional record sales’ and was instead based on another traditional revenue stream: advertising?

When we’re talking about artists achieving video views in excess of 50 – 100 million views, the opportunity for advertising revenue is very real. We know YouTube and Google have demonstrated the ad potential for high-view videos, and indeed Sony is purported to be a revenue-sharing partner with YouTube.

So, perhaps that’s where digital agencies such as Razorfish can really create a new paradigm in music. No longer do we need to pay for the right to access content (in this case the actual songs of artists such as AM), to achieve success and sustainability for an artist or the industry.

The value Razorfish, and indeed this model, presents to the industry is in its roots – creating content that resonates with a social audience, and generating revenue for their client, which in this case is a musician.

This model could allow artists from around the world to build social networks of fans who share their enthusiasm for independent artists with others through platforms such as Last.fm. But instead of relying on a dwindling group of large music publishers and radio stations building markets for a handful of artists around the world and attempting to generate ‘record sales’ in what is surely a digital world of music consumption, we actually turn it upside down.

This is essentially what the Spotify model could and should be. The Freemium version (a live online streaming platform for music) enables you to listen to playlists of your favourite artists, with advertising in-between songs. The gap in Spotify, however, is that the advertising revenue doesn’t go to the artist.

So, what if we marry this platform, the popularity of peer-based music sharing platforms like Last.fm, with advertising-generating platforms such as YouTube and even Google, to create a new wave of accessible music?

I believe this is what MySpace Music was seeking to do, yet by perhaps failure of its own brand, hasn’t really seen success in its advertising subsidized streaming platform.

And this is, in my opinion, a key opportunity for a digital agency such as Razorfish; it’s our job to always remember that we must focus on content and sharing. Facilitating brands, ideas and messaging – or in this case, music – into digital environments where the community and artist can form a true symbiotic relationship, based on accessibility, sustained by partners and advertising revenue-sharing.

And as a side note, I for one (as a Razorfish employee) am excited about the opportunity to work with up and coming Australian artists based on the pioneering by our US partner. If you’re keen, you can email me

So, what do you think?

July 27, 2010

Drum Roll! The SOCIAL ELECTION is launched

Launched last night at the Social Election and on Twitter @socialelection, the new Election-analysis blog features commentary on how – and how well – Australia’s political parties are using social media, plus how the major leaders, Gillard, Abbott and Brown, are resonating with people during the election.

Amnesia Razorfish is the only digital agency publishing its full insights into the election and the political parties’ use of all social media and online platforms, including monitoring and analysis.

The 2010 Federal Election, widely touted to be the ‘digital election’, comes after recentexamples of the US and UK elections which used social media to engage and stimulate supportand demonstrated social media’s ability to impact an election. It’s clear that Australian political parties, however, are struggling to understand how to use social media.

Amnesia Razorfish Social Strategy Manager Karalee Evans writes in the Social Election’s opening analysis

When the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced the election for Saturday 21st August 2010, I, for one, believed both the Liberal and Labor parties would hit the ‘activate’ button on pre-planned social campaigns.

Just like the war chest of above-the-line campaigns of attack TV commercials, print ads and pamphlets, I was expecting a social barrage – but I’m still waiting.

The social media efforts of Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and to a certain extent Bob Brown and the Greens, have been embarrassingly poor, even arrogant.

More and more, people are seeking information, participation and validation from our three party leaders via Twitter and Facebook. And in return people are getting a lot of talking at – not to.

The social movement is happening, with or without Gillard and Abbott.

The Social Election will look at how social media provides a finger on the pulse into how people are responding to each party. Results will be reflected in weekly articles and polls, the socialpulse of a feed of online conversation, a real-time share of voice worm-board and aggregated content.

Topics and issues of most importance, and who they matter most to will be analysed, along with how each politician is resonating with the public, and who is really being heard.

Amnesia Razorfish will consider share of voice between who is being talked about most and will analyse social media sentiment, trending topics, key influencers and reach of each party and leader.

These insights are critical to understanding which way the election will go and how the voting community engages with social media during the election. We hope it will also assist in solidifying social media’s place as a credible channel for people and brands to achieve their own business objectives ~ Karalee Evans.

More content and elements will continue to be added to the blog, such as YouTube, Facebook and other online and social platforms, demonstrating that Amnesia Razorfish is the only one publishing election insights across social media and online platforms.

July 14, 2010

Crust Free Pizza Fail

When talking about Twitter accounts which do it well – which engage users, spark conversation and create evangelists, I’m usually not one to go past @Crust_pizza, who do it right.

Their Twitter account has risen to huge popularity using the Weekly #crustfreepizzafriday competition which – every Friday – is practically viral.

Their day-to-day content is targeted at the younger audience, with videos drawn from the vein of Funniest Home videos, music tracks which they’re into, movie trailers, in addition to a sprinkling of corporate news like store openings. And, perfectly, they respond to customers in realtime.

However, today they tweeted this:

What, did they put the Work Experience kid on Twitter for the day?! More on this, after the jump.

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