thecoolcommentator:

This is bad, really bad. The man’s name in question is “Harman Bajwa” — Remember his name is literally Harman.

He was happy with his facebook URL, http://facebook.com/harman … until one day Ad Agency Carat sends this e-mail to him:

From: Tyler Bahl
To: Harman Bajwa
Sent: Fri, January 22, 2010 11:25:21 AM
Subject: Harman

Hi Harman,

Thanks for accepting my friend request on Facebook.

I’m the emerging media strategist at Carat in Boston and I work on the Harman International account. We’re launching our first initiative in partnership with the GRAMMYS on Monday. Harman International is looking to obtain the vanity url facebook.com/harman for their Facebook fan page.

We are currently working with Facebook to reclaim (http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=896#/help.php?page=899) the username, but I wanted to explore opportunities to work with you to acquire the name. In the past, we have offered product in exchange for social domain names. One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar , we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero.

Do you have time to connect today to discuss this opportunity in more detail?

Best,

-tb

Of course Harman said no. That’s his name, he’s not giving it up. He’s not giving up his name for a Diet Coke … It’s his freaking name! Then Ad Agency Carat contacts Facebook, next thing you know, Harman get’s this e-mail from Facebook.

Please Read This!
Warning

The username you selected was removed for violating Facebook’s policies. A Facebook username should have a clear connection to one’s identity. In addition, impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited. If you see other people with usernames that do not accurately represent their real names, it is only because they have not yet been removed for misuse.

To select a new username, please visit the following link:

www.facebook.com/username

Thanks for your understanding,

The Facebook Team

Huh? So Harman is violating Facebooks terms for using Harman as his Facebook ID? That’s hot. We completely hope that Carat’s Harman campaign fails. This is just wrong on so many levels. Great Advertising Campaign Carat … you guys are freaking amazing… the lack of social media skills coming from your agency never ceases to amaze us.

And Harman International spent money with your ad agency for social media? Carat should be paying them in damages to their name.

Complete Garbage.. I don’t know how you guys are in business…. seriously you completely lack in social media understanding… stealing someone’s name right off the bat isn’t the right way to go for it.. and bribing him with a Diet Coke isn’t the right way to go about it. In fact so far your entire social media campaign isn’t right.

You guys should just do print or something… disconnect the internet to your location.. clearly you don’t know how to use it. Thank you TechCrunch for finding this.

(via http://www.tribbleagency.com/?p=6676)

Nothing in the world deserves to be re-blogged more than this. Fantastically hilarious example of sibling rivalry. Read it and weep (with laughter). The picture explains it all but if it’s too small to read check it out on the site where I found it.

Since starting to work in social media I’ve become quite addicted to it. Kinda like this guy. But different.

As I logged onto Facebook this morning I was greeted with an ad from a graduate looking for a job. If you’re in need of a graduates soul, this one is swapping hers for a job. This is a pretty unique way to try get a job, it’s just a shame that graduates have to resort to paying to advertise themselves.

Also, in follow up to my recent post on the standard selling an internship, the BASTARDS sold it for over £7k. Complete fuckwits.

The other day I wrote a post with a flow chart to help iPhone users decide weather they actually need to use their iPhone at that particular moment in time (read it here). Well, this is a follow up to that post, this time it’s for Facebook users and helps you decide weather you actually need to comment on someones status. Enjoy.

I was asked today what my favourite social media campaign was and at the moment it’s this one from Ikea. There you go. I know you didn’t ask but I’ve told you anyway. So just watch the video yeah. I may change my mind next week so I’ll make you watch another video again.

I wrote a blog post titled ‘Brand me baby. BRAND ME!‘ last week about how I intend to brand myself for networking purposes. In brief I talked about how I’ve done it before and how I’m in the process of doing it now.

I’ve just had business cards printed from a design I created myself on photoshop. In order to make me recognisable to industry figures and potential employers I have synchronised my Twitter profile, business card and CV. By doing this I hope that when I give someone my business card they might just say “I know you, we’re following each other on Twitter” and so on.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll by synchronising my Facebook profile and this blog too.

My girlfriend hadn’t read my previous post, nor had I told her about how I was branding myself, but by coincidence she’s been doing it too! Last night she went to a PR networking event in Canary Wharf where she met a PR top dog. she gave him her business card and he instantly recognised her from Twitter! Fantastic. That is exactly what I am branding myself for and she is a great example of how it works perfectly. She will probably write a better blog post about how she did it within the next week so check out her blog called ‘The Intern’

If you’re thinking about making a business card make sure you have continuity between all ‘media’ you use.

Good idea? Done it before? Does it work? Does it not work? Comments…

Last week I went to Channel 4 HQ for a meeting with Richard Davidson-Houston and his colleague Mark Haefner. The purpose, was to show them my dissertation where I demonstrated how brands can communicate in conversations with their consumer. I had used Channel 4’s On Demand service, 4OD, as a test subject. Of course, as a recently graduated student, I had the ulterior motive of trying to get a job out of it too.

First impressions of the building were great. If you own a telly, which I imagine you do, you’ve probably seen the Channel 4 idents with a 4 made up of pylons, council estate, rock and so on. The camera pans around until it becomes clearly visible. Well at the entrance to C4 HQ they’ve got a massive 4 made up of umbrellas, which becomes clearly visible as you walk up to the front entrance.

The guys liked my ideas and they told me about forthcoming communications and developments that they have planned, to which I gave my opinions and constructive criticisms where necessary. Perhaps giving criticism to a potential employer is a stupid idea but these were nice guys and I was being my honest self. If anything I’ve given them valuable consumer feedback, for free.

So C4 programmes are on YouTube, very good, and about time. They’ve realised that they need to bring content to the user instead of merely driving consumers towards the content. My dissertation revolved around this concept of people using social networks as their ‘hub’ or base station and if people, or brands, want to communicate with them then that’s where to do it.

One of the most obvious and popular examples is Facebook. Do you know anyone that hasn’t got a Facebook profile? If you do, there amoung a few. As a planet we populate this hub in greater volumes than some countries so that’s were content providers such as C4 need to provide content.

So I believe that C4 along with other television programmes should provide their content ON Facebook. We as consumers can then watch what we want, when we want, how we want and with who we want. See my photoshopped examples below.

4OD for Facebook Fan Page. With updates of latest programmes such as Deal or No Deal. Users can ‘like’ and comment. Adverts on the right can change according what programmes are most recent, such as the ad for the Deal or No Deal scratch card.

Watch programmes with friends and chat in adjacent window. Adverts on the right can change according to what users have said in the chat box. In this example Julia says: “Omg I wanna get the box set so bad!” and the ad has changed to an advert for the Desperate Housewives box set.

Watch in full screen whilst chat box is hidden or turned off.

A users status is automatically updated so that their friends can see what they’re watching and who with. They can ‘like’, comment, join you, or start watching in their own thread. This is social television viewing.

On a users profile a favourites box can be added which is updated automatically with a users top 5 favourite programmes as they’re released.

It also turns out that C4 are trying to work out ways of driving traffic from short video clips of programmes, to the full length versions on the 4OD site. The company I’m working at now would be perfect for doing just that, so it’s possible that We Are Social could pitch for this account.

Week 1

So if you’ve been following my blog you’ll know that on Tuesday I had an informal chat/interview with Leila at a social media agency called We Are Social. By Wednesday I had started day one of my 1 month internship at the company and after a three day week I’m excited to start my first full week tomorrow.

At the moment I’m still learning the ropes (and people’s names!) and I’m getting to dip my toe in a variety of different projects and tasks. I’m mainly doing research into blogs, bloggers and forums. One of my seniors (yes if you’re reading this guys, I did just call you senior, HA!) might ask me to search for an influential UK blogger with lots of page views and a specific interest in a certain area. Although I’m getting a lot of help, I find doing this quite difficult and I’m pretty slow at it, but I figure that with practice I’ll improve.

If I’m lucky I’ll get invited to a brainstorming session where we’ll be told about the client, the target audience and the brief. We’ll talk about it, ask lots of questions and suggest ideas. Then we can go away and think further about the brief and come back with more ideas. I like that We Are Social creates ideas as a unit, there’s no individual teams and everyone is involved in idea generation. I found that in my work experience at EHS Brann some of the creatives can be quite possessive over their ideas. I guess some people want to claim ownership of their ideas but I think better ideas come from being open and frivolous with your ideas… or maybe I’ve still got a lot to learn! Let’s see what week two  brings.

I’m growing a much deeper knowledge of how social media can be used to connect with consumers for selling products or simply for starting conversations about a brand or service. In addition I’m becoming much more in tune with Twitter and Facebook and learning about emerging networks such as FourSquare.

Two new interns starting tomorrow!

Just found this pretty cool site that finds the worlds most popular songs and artists based on how many times they’ve been mentioned on social networks.