Great example of ambush marketing

kulula.com is the "Unofficial National Carrier of the You-Know-What" and Fifa, of course, did not like that at all! Fifa, the International Federation of Association Football, is very protective of its image rights and trademarks around the World Cup, and with less than three months to go to kick off on June 11th they have objected to a South African budget airline’s advertising.

The advert, as you can see, featured pictures of the stadiums, national flags, vuvuzelas (South African plastic trumpets) and the delightful tag line “Unofficial National Carrier for the You-Know-What”.

In order to avoid potential trouble and a big fine kulula.com has smartly pulled out the adverts last week as Fifa said the airline could not use the symbols - even the word "South Africa", kulula.com's spokeswoman said. Fifa, however, said the images taken together were "ambush marketing". Fifa is extremely powerful and you do now want to go against it.

"For the record, Fifa did not tell Kulula that they could not use soccer balls, or the word 'South Africa', or the Cape Town stadium, or the national flag or vuvuzelas," said a statement from football's world governing body, it was the combination of these elements which were banned. Fifa said the advert breached South African law "by seeking to gain a promotional benefit for the kulula brand by creating an unauthorised association with the 2010 Fifa World Cup". Fair enough.

Many people across the country have criticised Fifa's move, saying that football's world governing organisation does not own South Africa's soccer stadiums, soccer balls or vuvuzelas.

Kulula is known for its quirky adverts and aircraft designs; the one shown above is, they say, part of their ongoing strategy to demystify air travel, and the one below helped them to raise over half a million rand for the charity CHOC (Children’s Hematology Oncology Clinic Childhood Cancer Foundation of South Africa).

Well, what to say? These guys at Kulula are definetely creative and original. In just a few days they had great worldwide coverage and full support by the South African people! It definitely pays off to be brave!

What if you lost all your Facebook friends and photos?!?!

How terrible would that be? In a second you might lose all relationships and photos that you’ve spent years building and acquiring through Facebook!

No problem, you can now use a recently launched application called SocialSafe. Whether you use Facebook for business or personal purposes SocialSafe won’t let you down.

SocialSafe is an effective, fun new application enabling Facebook users to manage their Facebook data offline. The really nice thing about SocialSafe is that it works as a really cheap way to backup your Facebook account. Should you ever want to leave Facebook or your account is deleted without warning, you have access to your friends, your photos, and the meat of your Facebook profile on your computer.

SocialSafe is currently available for less than a price of a decent cup of coffee. You can purchase quickly and easily through Paypal (you do not need a Paypal account - you can buy on Paypal using a credit card) and in just a few minutes you can have all your photos, tagged photos, friends and profile on your PC or laptop, browse them, and do whatever you like with them. It only costs $2.99, bit more that OR 1!!

It has had positive reviews by most social media experts and bloggers.

For more info, explanations and videos please you can check their website here:

Facebook becomes bigger Google!

As reported by the Financial Times last week, Facebook, for the first time, overtook Google's popularity amongst US internet users.

Is it a sign that the web is becoming more sociable than searchable or maybe it is just tempporary? Is that why Google recently launch Buzz? So why is Facebook worth "only" between $1bn to $1.5bn while Google $23.7bn last year?

The full article can be read here.

Online visibility - what's your score?

How visible, online, are companies or even individuals in Oman?

When doing this survey I took into consideration the most common networks/platforms and search engines such as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, Flickr, Wikis, etc. Of course the final scores depend on how many appearences and how many times sites are mentioned on the net.

Let’s just compare those companies we use on the daily basis as well as some of the biggest ones:

Omantel/Oman Mobile (recently merged), combined score: 67

nawras score: 237

Bank Muscat score: 30

HSBC score: 1

 

National Bank of Oman score: 15


Omanoil score: 6


PDO score: 4


Chips Oman score: 17


Lulu score: 8


Oman Air score: 96

To have a better understanding of how these figures work let's have a look at some of the big multinationals and their scores:

Coca Cola, 4166

British Airways, 600
Emirates, 3353
Real Madrid, 1471

To conclude let's see the bloggers in Oman who score the highest.....big surprise here:

The most famous of all, Muscat Confidential, score: 12










otheroman score:......23










Dhofari Gucci score: 3

Oman Community score: 2

And finally this blog, Oman Collective Intelligence, score: 6

If you want to know how your blog/website scores just drop me a mail.

PR insight & tidbits (8)

In the previous PR insight & tidbits post we have seen (here) about press releases and how to write them correctly in order to attract the editors’ attention; this post is meant to be a follow up looking at the evolved version of the press release, the Social Media Press Release.

The changing needs of the end consumer and increasing ease of use for the media are the two main driving forces behind the development od the social media press release.

Due to the increasingly social and sharing nature of the web and the increasing importance of press releases as direct to consumer communication tools, it is important for marketers and public relations professionals to adjust their message format and delivery to correspond with the needs of today’s web savvy audience.

Another motivator for using social media with press releases is that editorial resources at many publications are running thinner than ever and expected to do more with less. Social media press releases provide links to additional resources that are helpful for story research and they also package information into formats that are easy to use for quotes and citing references/statistics. Images, audio and video also add impact to the release.

Facilitating news distribution and consumption by utilizing social media elements provides the social media savvy internet audience with information in a format that is familiar and more functional than a traditional press release. Encouraging the sharing of news via social bookmarks, social news, image and video sharing as well as subscribing to news via RSS provides the news publisher multiple options for meeting the information consumption needs of consumers as well as the media.

In essence, a well written and produced social media press release will make it easier for a journalist to write the story they are tasked with and in a format that is increasingly popular with end consumers.

Here is how the evolved press release should look like (thanks to shift communications, the creators of the release).

And here are a couple of examples of social media press releases:

Anasoft Introduces an All New 3-D Screensaver Just in Time for Halloween

Chevy Presents a Great Opportunity to U.S. College Students

In the next section of PR Insight and Tidbits we will have a look at how and where to distribute your press releases. As usual let me know your thought and feel free to contact me at any time.

Some mistakes companies shouldn't do on social media

As we said several times social media isn’t complicated. At the end of the day it is all about listening to your customers, being helpful to them and let them do the rest. For many companies it is still difficult to plan and implement social media successfully.

There could be several reasons for this, let’s see them:

Have a strategy. Sometimes companies enter social media without knowing why, or the objectives, or even without knowing the most suitable platform for them. Also a key factor is to know your audience, where they are and what they do, are they online at all?

Most companies only talk about their products or services and not looking at the bigger picture, that way it would be difficult for people to be engaged. A great example is Kodak and their blog, A Thousand Words. The blog is about photography and creativity in general, nothing to do with cameras.

Another reason is that some companies listen to customers but do not take action…what’s the point then?! If a company creates an online presence that’s open and allows customer feedback, it creates the expectation that the company is going to do something with that feedback. Worse than not being heard is being ignored…isn’t it?

Many people, including myself, think corporate web sites are just like online brochures. Nowadays customers expect interaction where content creation is the key to social media success. Every company should have a web site with a content management system that allows for quick, easy content creation without the IT department needing to recode a web site. Anyone in the organization should be able to publish via a CMS. How many companies are ready for that?

  

Customers should be at the core of the brand. When policies, procedures, products and processes become more important than the customer, there’s no way social media efforts can be effective. When your employees are more concerned with what’s in or out of their job description than doing the right thing to help the customer, that’s not a culture that’s likely to build trust and advocacy for your brand.

Lastly, as we have recently seen on Twitter in Oman (thanks to fellow blogger other Oman), be ready to get negative comments. Some companies’ cultures or employees aren’t just ready yet to engage with those opinions, in that case then stay away from social media or have an expert to assist you.

There is probably a few more other things corporates should not do, if you think of any please add them. Thank you.

OFF TOPIC - VERY IMPORTANT

Dear all in Oman,

the Al Qurum Veterinary Clinic desperately needs YOUR help right now. They have more cats in need of help than they can handle.

Some of these cats were abandoned, left without care. Some were scheduled to be put down. We cannot turn our back on these cats! If you love cats, or know anyone who does, please get in touch with the Clinic immediately and help saving a cat.

Please if you ever thought about adopting a cat or a dog – now is the time! Or even just to help by donating pet-food, unwanted items for re-selling, old blankets or cushions – we would be very happy to get any of your help!
Oh – and maybe you can tell as many of your friends as possible? The more who know about us and how to make a difference in our lifes, the better!

Here are some cats who needs a home urgently:

Hi there… I’m Amanda...

I’m a 6month old female who is fully vaccinated and neutered and desperately looking for a loving family to take me home. I’m a very pretty girl and I’m actually quite small for my age so people think I’m younger than what I am! I get on well with other cats and I love people. I’m active and playful but I can be quite independent at times so I’m happy to just do my own thing! When I came to AQVC I had a bad front leg but now it’s all healed and I’m ready to go. I can be an indoor cat as I’m fully trained to use my litter box and I can go outside sometimes, but I have to be careful as the bigger cats may pick on me!! I would love to be the new addition to your family so please come by the clinic and visit me or many of my other friends here… your guaranteed to fall in love...Thanks…

Hello there… My name is Cutie...

and I would like to invite you to come and meet me!

… or any of my many friends! We love to have company and we enjoy to be with you or your friends – maybe you could come and visit us whenever you feel like seeing a 4-legged friend? We are cats & dogs, often even rabbits and guinea-pigs & we come in all ages, colours, characters & sizes and we are all here at Al Qurum Veterinary Clinic waiting to find a new home with you or anyone whom you might know who might be interested in us? ! The nice people here at AQVC will try their best to match us to what you really want from your new family members. All of us are vaccinated, neutered and very used to being around people. In fact – we LOVE people!

Unfortunately this year there are so many more of us – also us pets had to feel the ‘credit-crunch’ and many of us were left behind when our owners left…

 HELLO YOU - My Name is Bitzy...
I’m a 4 month old GORGEOUS female who is fully vaccinated and neutered and desperately looking for a loving family to take me home. I get on great with other animals and I LOVE people… in fact I love everyone and everything and whoever I meet, seems to just fall in love with me.

I’ve been here at AQVC since I was a tiny kitten and abandoned on the door step, and all the lovely staff here gave me such love, care and affection and now they really want to see me get a family of my own who will give me all the love I deserve. I really would make the perfect addition to your family… I’m very active and playful and once I’ve worn myself out, I love nothing more than snuggling in your lap and purring away for hours!!

Hi my name is Dubaiya and I am very pleased to meet you.

I was found on the road a few months ago, scared and lonely, but luckily I was rescued and brought here to Al Qurum Veterinary clinic where I fitted in immediately. Everyone here loves me as I am such a beautiful and friendly cat who loves affection and being cuddled… I’ll purr away in your arms for hours. I love to run around and play with toys and if you give me time I’ll play with your other pets too! I am fully vaccinated and neutered and am trained at using my litter box so you’ve nothing to worry about there. I would so love to have my own family who’ll love me and I think I can make you very happy. I would really like to meet you so please come in and see me…we can have a play and a cuddle and hopefully you’ll fall in love

Hello… My name is Frankie…

I’m a 2 year old male who is desperately looking for a loving home. I’m fully vaccinated, neutered and very friendly with people. I’m good with other cats once I get to know them, but don’t worry it doesn’t take me long to settle in. But my bestest friend in the whole wide world is Harry Potter… he’s my adopted brother and the only cat that has never laughed at me for not having any ears! You see… when I was a kitten, I got trapped in a car engine and so my ears were burnt away. Harry always makes me feel handsome, he’s also looking for a home… maybe you could take us both, that would make us SO happy. But if you can’t take us as a pair it’s ok… as long as we both find loving, caring families. I’m fully trained to use my litter box indoors and like to have a wander around outside sometimes as well. Please come and meet me.

Hello… My name is Harry Potter...

I’m a 2 year old male who is desperately looking for a loving home. I’m fully vaccinated and neutered and very friendly with people. I’m good with other cats once I get to know them, but don’t worry it doesn’t take me long to settle in. But my bestest friend in the whole wide world is Frankie… he’s my adopted brother and he’s also looking for a home… maybe you could take us both, that would make us SO happy. But if you can’t take us as a pair it’s ok… as long as we both find loving, caring families that’s all that really matters. I’m fully trained to use my litter box so I’d be the perfect indoor pet, and I also like to wander around outside sometimes as well. Please come by the clinic and visit me… I’d be VERY happy to meet you.

Hi, how are you???

I am Frida and I know …This is not the best picture of me …

But in reality I am actually really pretty. I’m a one year old female who is fully vaccinated and neutered. I love to run around and play as I have lots of energy! But I also like some quiet time and once I learn to trust you I’d like nothing more than to have a snuggle. I’m also quite an independent girl so I’m more than happy to just do my own thing! I would so love to have a family of my own and a place to call home – I just really like being around people. And I don’t mind if you have another cat – I love company and I make friends easily. Maybe you could come and visit me to see for yourself? I would love to meet you! Hope to see you soon.

Hello You…Our names are Nick and Nina...

We are a quiet and shy pair, but we love to be around people! We are in need of a special family to give us lots of love and that can take us both as we are inseparable. We love to cuddle up together and play together always, that’s why we only can go to a new home together!

We love to be around you and give you company– but as we are rather shy it will take us some time to be happy to be cuddled and touched.

Hi there… I’m Laurence…

I’m a 6month old “GORGEOUS” male who is fully vaccinated and neutered and desperately looking for a loving family to give me a home. I’m a very friendly boy who is great with people and other animals and I just LOVE to play!! I’m active and lively and will keep you highly amused … I love to play with all my other friends here at AQVC and I’m always making people laugh and smile. On the other hand, once I’ve worn myself out I’m the most cuddly affectionate boy who will snuggle up on your lap and purr for hours… I really do love people and all I want is to be apart of a loving family. I would ideally like to be an indoor cat who has a kitty door so I can wander in and out as I please, I’m fully trained to use my litter box so there’s nothing to worry about there!

WHO COULD POSSIBLY RESIST KITTENS?

Come and visit us at Al Qurum Veterinary Clinic. There are so many of us here from tiny kitten to bigger kitten in all sizes and colors – and this is not counting the other cats that are more than 6 months old!! We are all socialized and very friendly and affectionate and we love to play and run around, we also like quiet time and theres nothing better than having a cuddle and purring away in your arms. We are trained to use our litter boxes and we are fully vaccinated and neutered so there’s nothing for you to worry about. We’re ready to go… so all we need is a loving family to take us. You should come in and play and have some fun with us and maybe you’ll realize that we can make you laugh and smile and very happy very easily?!

This is not an advert for the Clinic; any help would be appreciated.
These are the Clinic's details:
WWW.MUSCATVETS.COM - INFO@MUSCATVETS.COM
Or call on +968 24562263
Thank you.