Social currency (the value locked away in your social network) is an oft mentioned principle in online marketing. You build social currency by providing useful stuff to a growing network of fans and they reward the value of that stuff by sharing it with others, building their own social currency in the process.

A new service, Pay with a Tweet, makes this process a little more concrete by allowing users to purchase items using their social currency – in this case by sending a tweet out to their Twitter followers.

For example, an author might make a preview chapter of their latest book available or a band could release a free bonus track, to anyone who tweets about it. The benefit to the ‘seller’ is the increased visibility and the potential that it will ‘go viral’ – the ‘buyer’ gets free stuff.

Pay With a Tweet is a pretty simple implementation of the idea – but one that’s likely to be mirrored, and already is, in plenty of marketing campaigns. I can also see this concept being further developed to handle physical products and differentiate the ‘price’ based on the size of a users network (for example, someone with 1000 followers might get the goods for 1 tweet whereas someone with 500 might have to tweet twice).

Site: www.paywithatweet.com

Working on behalf of UK charity Depaul UK, London agency Publicis have released iHobo, an iPhone app designed to raise awareness of homelessness.

Users can download their own homeless person and make decisions about their life by offering food, shelter, emotional support and money. They also receive alerts whenever their iHobo is in need of help. The ‘goal’ is, over three days, to make sure they stay healthy and keep off drugs.

So, is it a powerful way to help challenge preconceptions and drive the need home – or – is it just a little tasteless for our delicate sensibilities, further dehumanising the people it aims to help?

Don’t let the cutesy name fool you – there’s a movement of parent bloggers out there, with savvy marketing acumen and powerful influencing muscle, who are cultivating some pretty big networks.

Advertising Age’s recent report, ‘Inside the Mommy Blogger Business’ , uncovers how Mommy Blogging is increasingly becoming a powerful digital force revolutionising the marketing practices of the world’s largest companies.

Case in point: companies like Wal-Mart are embracing mommy bloggers as key influencers. The retail giant is now sponsoring 12 official mommy bloggers in a professional capacity to review products and publish feedback.

Elevenmoms is a subsidiary of the WalMart website, and there is a direct link from these mommy blogs to the WalMart shopping page. The site describes the genesis of the idea:

“For many months, we’ve been engaged in social media platforms that generate discussion about money saving products and services. Sites and services such as Walmart’s Checkout blog, Customer Ratings and Reviews, and MakeYourDollarStretch.com have given our customers a forum to learn about products and share ideas for saving money.

The question was, how do we support and build upon existing money saving communities? Soon it became clear that we should reach out to the many great writers who are already blogging about great money saving ideas.” (www.instoresnow.walmart.com)

Nobody has yet been able to tangibly measure the business impact these parents have created through their online efforts. What we can track is that a huge percentage of moms go online – to use social networking sites, visit shopping sites, and engage as both readers and creators of blogs.

Mums make up 40% of all females going online, according to a report from BlogHer, a community for women who blog. It also showed that 8m women publish blogs, and 27m women read blogs.

On an individual level these blogs provide a differentiated and trusting voice, enabling women to connect with someone like them on a personal basis. And indeed, this is how most Mommy Blogs are intended – as a way to communicate and share ideas with an extended network of friends and acquaintances.

Some Mommy Bloggers do go on to become high-profile bloggers in their niches – and become equally high-profile targets for brands to connect with. Others will never reach more than a few hundred people in their own personal network. Either way, from the corporate perspective Mommy Bloggers – individually or collectively – represent the voices of  hundreds of thousands of mums providing invaluable feedback and influencing others in the market.

Advertisers have always struggled to connect effectively with the half of the market that controls the majority of household expenditure. The exciting thing about this movement is that Mommy Bloggers are not just talking about themselves – they’re also spending on behalf for their families – so are plugged into multiple product categories. In fact, it’s been such a force, marketing & PR agencies are even adding mommy blogging to their list of services.

So, should this approach inform every company’s social media strategy – engaging with specific influential individuals to get the word out about their products?

Describe the business model of a typical ad agency, and you’d be hard-pushed to use the words ‘meritocratic’ and ‘pioneering’ in the same sentence. Well, one agency has bucked the status quo for fat fees and retainers, and (shock, horror!) has decided to let its customers pay-what-they-like.

Much in the same vein as name-your-price holidays and restaurants, AgencyNil have taken the brave step of letting their talents determine their worth, and let their clients decide what to pay.

The logic behind it is straight-forward enough. At the same time as clients are cutting advertising expenditure, there are also plenty of talented ad folk being made redundant and new grads making their way onto the market.

Here’s the founder’s take (via BBH Labs):

“ENTER: the young, hungry, talented, not-afraid-to-take-a-risk individuals coming out of portfolio schools, graduate programs, and those from agencies – recently laid off but not yet spoiled by a big paycheck.

We can do the work, have the confidence and skills to do it well, we’re complete digital natives, and we don’t mind taking the risk of saying “don’t pay anything up front, then. We’ll do the work and if you like it, then pay us whatever you think is fair.” We’ll prove it.

It works out nicely for both parties. The agencies can feel like they’re shaving big percentages off of their expenditures and we the workers wind up doing better in the long run than getting sporadic freelance at a high rate. And we’re learning as we go . . .”

How AgencyNil Works

Potential clients submit a request via email, and AgencyNil pull a team together from their bank of between-jobber advertising professionals and smart graduates. They complete the brief in the time specified, and the client then decides what it’s worth. Any further tweaks or revisions are agreed once the first tranche of work has been paid for.

Cheaper than using freelancers, and better than relying on interns to crack a creative challenge, AgencyNil have explicitly outlined their belief that; “Advertising has evolved..there is no more advertising.. it’s a conversation that changes every hour” , and are self-declared digital natives.

Is this a visionary model for struggling agencies in a floundering economic climate?

Although they’ve been nimble enough to see beyond the linear model most agencies use – and realise that freelancers aren’t in consistent enough demand – will the businesses they’re targeting be willing to adopt this way of working?

It’ll be an interesting sell, but if they can prove their worth …

Site: www.agencynil.com

Digg has announced that they will be trialling sponsored ads on the site – which will appear alongside normal stories in the river.

What makes this interesting is that they will be applying their own voting model to the ads as well – popular ads that get more Diggs will be charged at a lower price per click and less popular ones will pay more, in the hope that they will be priced out of the stream.

This has been done elsewhere (although less publicised) and Digg-style voting and ratings are common practice on all sorts of sites. But the obvious problem with this pricing model for advertising would seem to be that the ads that gain the most prominence (and are therefore the cheapest to the advertiser) will bring in the least money per click for Digg.

That said, could a similar idea be used for other forms of online (and even offline) advertising?

In today’s thrifty climate, brands are becoming more savvy in seeking out cost-effective and innovative ways to reach consumers. At the same time, consumers are looking for new ways to earn a little extra money.

Neatly combining these two trends, UK-based company Everyday Models is turning the traditional advertising business model on its head by selling ad space in consumer’s daily lives.

Founded by James Brookner and Matt Garcia, the idea was born after James read about a guy in Nebraska that was touting his forehead as advertising space on Ebay.

So they extracted the same principle, tapped into the timely need to provide brands with highly visible, socially-relevant ad channels that aren’t going to bust the bank, and gave consumers a simple way to make some extra dosh without encroaching too much on their personal space.

Their mission is a game-changing one, according to James Brookner:

“Everyday Models are revolutionising the advertising industry, enabling consumers to become sellsumers by renting out various aspects of their daily lives”

Everyone’s a winner.

Renting Out Our Daily Lives

Everything from members’ online profiles to their clothes, their cars, and even their homes are fair game.

1. SNADvertising – (Social Network Advertising) lets consumers sell their social network profile space ( ie, Facebook, Twitter) to advertisers
2. Human Advertising – Become a human brand space by wearing clothing to endorse a brand or organisation.
3. Vehicle Advertising – Consumers can go all out and wrap their car in advertising, or keep it low key with a few stickers on the windows.
4. Promotions – Using consumers as promotional staff to hand out flyers, and conduct in-store demos.

Everyday Models creates a democratic way for consumers and brands to form an alliance through active participation, leaving both sides with some extra cash in their pocket.

In particular, as consumers continue to create their own media spaces in the form of online profiles, we expect to see more ingenious businesses helping them to leverage these spaces for profit.

How else could this kind of model be applied?

Site: www.everydaymodels.net

About the Author: A former journalist and copywriter, Jacqueline has spent most of her career as an innovation consultant working with major brands. (More)

Unlike those in the media who love a good disaster story, my take on the recession is slightly different. Look at the majority of businesses that are suffering. They are, for want of a better word, ‘traditional’. Banking, automotive and retail, to name just three.

In business, just as in evolution, it is the mutations that drive development. When traditional models and methods are suffering, the key is innovation, innovation and more innovation.

Innovation on the UK High Street

In the UK, our high streets are becoming increasingly populated with empty, boarded-up shops.  On 14^th April, Community Secretary Hazel Blears announced the government’s ‘Empty Shops revival plan’ which involved putting community, art and informal learning projects into empty retail spaces.

The text of this much hyped ‘plan’ is littered with the word ‘temporary’ and constantly safeguards the opportunity for landlords and planners to return the premises to its original and ‘commercial’ use.

Right Idea from the Wrong People?

Now, I think repurposing high street spaces is an excellent idea, but I have two major issues with this plan.

Firstly, why exclude ‘creative and cultural’ from being ‘commercial’ and secondly, why on earth would you seek to safeguard a return to a high street business model that that has failed in the modern retail landscape. Maintaining the status quo should not be an option at this point, thinking about how to adapt should be.

The old notion of high street retail has been on the wane for years. It’s time to look at the high street in a new way. Not as a challenger to out of town superstores, those days are gone, but to the new high street; a place that holds a fantastic opportunity for powerful consumer engagement.

Destination: High Street

“Brands taking over high street retail spaces, not to sell, but to entertain and engage …”

Brands thrive on being able to generate engagement and trust amongst their consumers. The high street space, as it becomes more affordable and flexible, could allow brands to develop a channel of experiential and event based marketing on a localised basis. Red Bull Air Races comes to your high street. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea.

Brands taking over high street retail spaces, not to sell, but to entertain and engage through local artists, performers or educators, or by bringing art, sport and entertainment to those who would otherwise struggle to access it, seems a natural extension of the consumer demand to be entertained. T-Mobile and their staged flashmobs are a good example of this.

Brands need to be seen to improve or enrich our lives in some way. Adding colour and vibrancy and bringing life back to our high streets can achieve this. The high street becomes a destination in its own right, no longer just retailing, but still providing an important commercial and community function. If successful, the influx of visitors could actually spark demand for a revival of service led retail.

So, the simple idea is transforming vacant high street properties into consumer experience and engagement spaces for brands to drive loyalty. The targeting should be a no-brainer. I’ll leave the matching of brands to towns, spaces and activities up to the rest of you

A Few Quick Examples of Branded Spaces

• Teen Vogue brand experience
• Brand spaces on Springwise.com
• Popup Art Gallery in Soho
• Disney Brand Galleries in retail spaces

Pic: Flickr

Barbie™ turns 50 this year – although judging by her enduring plastic smile you wouldn’t think it. I think she’s had work done.

Anyway, if you want to recreate one of Barbie’s iconic looks from the last 50 years, cosmetics company Stila has launched a range of Barbie-inspired makeup sets. As the ‘Official Prestige Makeup Partner for Barbie 2009′, Stila have created 4 paint can packs to help you recreate Barbie’s look from various decades (1971 Malibu is pictured above).

“Four “Decades of Beauty” paint cans are filled with everything you need to recreate your favorite iconic Barbie™ looks. The sets also include a “Barbie™ Look Book” that includes a history of each top-selling Barbie™ doll over the last 50 years!”

Although I was a little disappointed not to find a Ken set anywhere (never mind GI Joe) this is a fun idea and an awful lot smarter than most merchandising tie ins we see.

Site: www.stilacosmetics.com/barbie