Firstly I'd like to apologise for the title I couldn't resist! To celebrate the 30th birthday of Ben and Jerry's today, Cake PR have made great use of Facebook. They have created a free gift (as shown) for people to give to their friends.

In less than 24 hours it has 'sold out' which means that people have given all of the 250,000 gifts. As far as I'm aware I think it's the first time one of the free branded gifts has sold out on the day it was released. That's quite an achievement not least because it means that they have gained a minimum of 500,000 exposures in one day from people sending and receiving the gift. Not to mention all the people who have seen the gift on people's facebook profiles, newsfeeds and the homepage, and will continue to do so. I don't think gifts are ever removed from people's Facebook profiles.

The facebook application is a clever concept too. It's like some of the other applications in that it allows you to send free gifts to your friends. The difference with the Ben and Jerry's application is that it allows you to send pictures of the different flavours of ice cream. Like mini adverts for their products. Furthermore it's sparked discussion amongst fans of the company. People are waxing lyrical about their favourite flavours and making calls for Ben and Jerry's to bring back discontinued flavours. I hope they make great use of that feedback.

Giving away free Ice Cream in the Scoop Shops is a great idea too. I just wish I lived near to somewhere that was participating in it!

UPDATE: Presumably due to popular demand the availability of the free gift has been doubled from 250,000 to 500,000. I wonder how long it will take for all those gifts to run out.

UPDATE: All 500,000 free gifts have now sold out. A minimum of 1 million exposures globally isn't bad going in under 36 hours.

Labels: advertisements, application, ben jerrys, cake pr, facebook, formby, free cone day, gift, ice cream, matthew watson, scoop shops, viral campaign

I love Crystal Castles and so does the NME apparently. They are featured on this week's front cover and included in a list of fifty bands to watch in 2008.

This is a photograph of Crystal Castles and I on friday night. I saw them perform at the Skins Party in Club Nation, Liverpool. They stole the show.

Their self-titled album came out today. I love that too.

Labels: alice glass, crystal castles, ethan kath, formby, liverpool, matthew watson, nme, party, skins

A couple weeks ago I blogged to say that I had applied for a place on Seth Godin's summer internship in New York. I didn't get it. I did however get invited to join his online internship during the summer months. A group of almost 100 top marketing students from around the world will be working together, sharing knowledge and learning from each other as well as from one of the greatest marketeers of all time and perhaps the world's most influential marketing blogger. Exciting, eh?

We'll be collaborating on marketing projects for Seth's website Squidoo.com as well as completing a number of other tasks. At the end of the summer, Seth has stated his intention to showcase the CV's of all the active interns on his phenomenally popular blog. Money can't buy that kind of reccomendation.

For my first task I'm hoping to team up with Richard Millington who writes a very inciteful marketing blog at FeverBee.com. We have been asked to create lenses (web pages) on Squidoo about topics which interest us. We haven't decided what our lenses will be about yet but I'm hoping we can write about the microblogging service Twitter. I shall keep you informed.

Labels: blog, formby, marketing, matthew watson, microblogging, new york, public relations, seth godin, squidoo, students, the marketing tribe, twitter, work experience

I discovered the High Snobiety blog today whilst I was searching for a t-shirt I saw in Dazed&Confused.

The blog features urban style and designs, from trainers to suitcases and even invitations sent out by fashion designers. I think this a pretty cool design for an invitation. It stands out, which is something I think all good PR communications should do. Also it cleverly ties in with the company's name, Original Fake.

For PR projects at University I've tried to make unusual invitations and fliers. For Mogul magazine I printed invitations on to ohp transparencies, with the title 'It's clear to see you've been invited to the Mogul magazine launch party'. I also made fliers for Mogul magazine designed to look like pieces of toast, with the slightly clichéd slogan of 'The best thing since sliced bread'.

As part of my Formby project press pack, promoting the town to tourists, I designed postcards to give out to journalists. It might not be the most innovative way to reach your publics but I still think there is a place for fliers and invitations in marketing. After all it grabs your attention a lot more than a simple invitation via e-mail or fax ever could.

Have you ever created any interesting fliers or invitations, or used a cool design to stand out?

Labels: blog, dazed confused, design, fliers, formby, highsnobiety.com, huddersfield, invitations, matthew watson, mogul magazine, original fake, university

Badly targetted newsletters are so frustrating. They are one of those things in life that really annoy me. With a bit more targeting they could be used so much better. I'm quite happy to receive newsletters when they relate to me but if they don't then they effectively become spam. Nobody likes spam.

Qube shoes have my details. They know I'm male. So why have they chosen to send me a newsletter of all this season's must-have high heels? It would take literally minutes to target it at female subscribers and it would no doubt increase their success rate. Afterall next time I receive their newsletter I will just delete it. That is if I don't unsubscribe first.

Labels: formby, mailing list, matthew watson, newsletter, qube shoes, spam, targeting

Fake weblogs or flogs have finally been told to flog off.

No longer just unethical PR practise, flogs will soon be illegal in the UK. Thanks to the 'Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008' it will be against the law for companies to mislead the public with fake blogs from the 28th May. It's a great move and one which I hope will see the PR industry continue to move away from it's image of lies and spin. After all deceiving your customers can't be a fantastic way to encourage brand loyalty and trust. Or a great way to use a PR budget.

Labels: blogging, consumer protection from unfair trading regulations, flogs, formby, matthew watson, public relations

On thursday I made my way down to London for an interview at Cake Brand Entertainment. I very much like the company, their work and their offices. Anywhere with an aquarium in the reception gets my vote.

Discussion ranged from the nightlife in Southport to my dissertation and my blog post about the Logobama viral website a few days ago. A topic, which appeared on the Cake blog a few hours later. It's probably just a coincidence, but a cool coincidence nonetheless.

I should find out about the job soon. So wish me luck!

Labels: cake pr, dissertation, formby, logobama, matthew watson, southport

Yesterday we had our photoshoot with Alex Petricca in a studio in Speke. What a great experience! Alex took photographs of us as a family in a variety of different poses from the diamond shaped bohemian rhapsody look as favoured by Queen to playing twister as favoured by the Queen. Possibly. He also took shots of my parents together, and of my brother and I, as well as some other groups shots. Plus we all had individual photos taken to warm us up, and perhaps inject a little bit of glamour into our facebook profiles.

All in all it was a great day and I think my mum really enjoyed the experience, since after all the photoshoot was her 50th birthday present from my brother and I.

With regards the weather in Huddersfield , it is snowing!

It is also my cousin's 18th birthday - Happy Birthday Lisa.

Labels: alex petrica, birthday, bohemian rhapsody, formby, huddersfield, matthew watson, photograph, queen

This is a photograph of me with Kurt and Jayson (in the green) from Plastic Little, and Joe (at the front) from We Need Leads.

Plastic Little performed last night at the Club NME night at the Underground in Southport. The band hale from Philadelphia and recently toured with Dizzee Rascal. I particularly enjoyed the songs that they covered by The Cure and The Smiths. Strangely they're only doing 3 shows in the UK. Stranger still they're performing in Southport, then London and then in Liverpool. Seems like a lot of travelling to me, considering Southport and Liverpool are so close.

Labels: club, dizzee rascal, formby, matthew watson, nme, plastic little, southport, underground, we need leads

The MOBO awards in conjunction with the CIPR are offering an excellent work placement for one lucky PR student or recent graduate. I'd apply for it myself, but the role requires someone with an interest in and knowledge of music of black origin. If that's you, find out more about the work placement by clicking here.

Labels: cipr, formby, matthew watson, mobo, music of black origin, public relations, work experience

Barack Obama's PR team have started a pretty cool viral campaign that both promotes Obama's presidential campaign and raises money from his supporters. Logobama lets you customise the colours of his campaign logo and add a picture of yourself in the centre. Naturally, I created my own. Looks pretty good don't you think? Maybe I should run for President!

I think embracing new media and technologies is a very clever move for a candidate whose campaign is based around change. Also the viral campaign seems to have been started as a reaction to Obama's supporters already using his logo online to support him. I also like how all of the user generated logo's are uploaded to Flickr after they've been approved. I imagine inappropiate images could be quite detrimental to the campaign so approving them first is quite a wise step.

The only negatives of the campaign that I can see is that it is not targetted terrifically well. I created a logo and I'm not an American voter. However I imagine many of the people who did create logo's are Americans. Although not all of them may be registered to vote as some of the images feature children who are too young to vote.

Also the campaign has only raised $520 so far from 18 people, which isn't much considering more than 4000 people have created logos using the website. I think the website itself may have cost more than that to create, unless of course it was created for free by a supporter's web design company. That said, the campaign has still reached more than 4000 people who will probably reach even more by featuring the logo on their blogs, facebook profiles, flickr accounts, msn messenger profiles, websites or whatever.

Labels: amerca, barack obama, blog, facebook, flickr, formby, logobama, matthew watson, msn messenger, presidential campaign, viral campaign

I received an e-mail from Cake PR in London today, inviting me to an interview for the position of digital account executive. I applied for the job last week after seeing it posted on Stephen Davies's site PrBlogger.com. The job sounds fantastic! Very innovative with plenty of scope to try new and exciting PR methods and mediums. Which is exactly what I want to do.

The picture shows one of Cake's PR stunts were they turned Trafalgar Square into a village green to promote the London villages to tourists. Strangely enough I talked about this stunt in my dissertation. I discussed how they had evaluated the campaign in terms of how many bloggers wrote about it, but didn't disclose the readership of those blogs in PR Week. Readership is important because some of those blogs may only have two readers, whereas other may have two million. Therefore coverage in one blog can be worth more or less than coverage in an another.

Curiously my parents have both been invited to interviews this week. Perhaps there is something in the water?

Labels: cake pr, digital account executive, dissertation, formby, job interview, london, matthew watson, new media, pr stunt, prblogger.com, public relations, stephen davies, trafalgar square

Today I have done two important things. I applied for a job with Seth Godin, and booked my flights to Berlin in late August.

The job isn't actually a job, it's a paid internship in the summer with marketing pioneer Seth Godin, in New York. The brief for the application was simply four pages of whatever you want. I chose to send my application in the form of a press release about myself. Seth quickly replied to say thank you. It only takes two minutes for employers to send a reply to applicants but I think it makes such a difference. Even if it is a negative response it is still better than no response in my opinion. What do you think?

I have booked my flights with Easy Jet to Berlin in the end of August. It only cost £90.00 including taxes, bags, insurance and carbon offsetting. An hour later the same flights cost more than £20 more so I think I was pretty lucky! I hope I am just as lucky with my application to Seth Godin.

Labels: berlin, easy jet, formby, matthew watson, new york, public relations, seth godin

After an hour of slow Internet induced stress I finally bought my tickets to this year's Leeds festival. I've never been to a music festival before so I'm really looking forward to it!

Labels: 2008, formby, internet, leeds festival, matthew watson, music