December 15, 2010

Ireland Wants You to Tweet Your ...Irishness?

If you are part-Irish, want to be Irish or just want to go to Ireland, you need to check out this campaign.

Tourism Ireland recently launched a marketing campaign encouraging people to connect with their "Irishness" in hopes that this relationship will lead to a convenient visit to the motherland.

The ‘My Irish 140’ campaign aimed at sparking the imagination and creativity of Irish descendants to follow myIrish140 on Twitter and tweet, in 140 characters or less, what makes them Irish. Each tweet must contain the hashtag #makesmeirish.

What's great about this cause is that it is a fun and imaginative way to spark interest through social media.

Everything is centered around the number '140', which as we all know is the max number of characters allowed in a tweet. The festivities began at 1:40pm last Friday and continued on for 140 hours or 5.8 days. On the campaign's website, myirish140.com, the top tweets will be featured and a list of 140 things to do and see in Ireland are continuing to be released.


December 12, 2010

Collide with These Colorful Reads of the Week : Dec. 12th

Check out some of my favorite articles this week and let me know which one was your favorite!
 
Greetings were awkward, and there was fidgeting in chairs as strangers gathered around a long table in a gritty Midtown dive.
But as soon as steaming platters of barbecue chicken, candied yams and cornbread hit the table, conversation and laughter came easy.

FoodieMemphis participants share dishes served family style, which helps promote conversation, McRae says...

How Social Media Can Facilitate Difficult Conversations About Race

A recent, much-buzzed-about trend story by Associated Press reporter Jesse Washington started with a statistic — 72 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers — and incorporated a Twitter debate.

Washington, AP’s national writer on race and ethnicity, said he had been wanting to write about the statistic for a while. Then he learned that a newly created “No Wedding No Womb” hashtag (#NWNW) drew 110,000 users and vehement diatribes within weeks.
“I knew I had my hook,” he said in an e-mail interview....

Al Qaeda Looks to Make New 'Friends' -- on Facebook

If you're on Facebook, Al Qaeda wants to friend you.
Terrorist groups are using Facebook to share operational information and to target, recruit and radicalize members of the general public, according to a Department of Homeland Security report obtained by FoxNews.com.
The DHS report, "Terrorist Use of Social Networking Sites: Facebook Case Study," notes while terrorists have been using social networking sites for quite some time, their strategies for exploiting Facebook have evolved and that they have learned "the inherent value in exploiting a non-ideological medium."

Lifestyles of the Mobile and Multicultural

A study was released today by Moguldom Media Group (the owners of Bossip.com) and its partner Briabe Media that sought to answer the question:

Why do multicultural consumers use their mobile phones?

Multicultural mobile users mostly use their phones for
social networking and text messaging.
The results were not incredibly surprising, but still worth noting, especially for advertisers.

 Most "multicultural consumers" or minorities, use their phone for entertainment and social networking more than anything else. In fact using a phone for the Internet (61%) was neck-and-neck with using it to place actual calls (62%). Of course, both were trumped by minorities' favorite mobile pastime - text messaging (68%).

 "There are two relatively new phenomena that we are seeing evolve with these consumers. Mobile entertainment and social networking are both growing in importance now that they have these powerful devices", said James Briggs, CEO of Briabe Media.

"Taking these into account, advertisers would be wise to look closely at offerings such as Facebook Places that can leverage the affinity consumers have for mobile social networks. Further, they should also consider linking their brands more closely with quality mobile content and entertainment platforms. Advertisers have struggled with these in the past; however, I believe that given the increased power of the networks and devices, we are in the midst of the perfect storm for mobile branded engagement opportunities."

Other findings:
  • Ninety percent access mobile social networks on their phone, with Facebook not surprisingly holding the top position.
  • Texting is now the mobile service used most frequently for 68% of the respondents, followed by placing calls (62%), then surfing the mobile internet (61%); 
  • Approximately 65% spend six or more hours per week on the mobile internet, with 18% spending twenty or more hours online via a mobile device; 
  • When asked, "What do you want to know more about when on the mobile internet?" 39% of the respondents cited entertainment, followed by news at 17%;  
  • Approximately 92% are aware of mobile ads on their phones and 85% respond to them although the vast majority, 63%, respond only rarely;
  • Nearly 30% presently make purchases over their mobile phones.

A few questions I have.

How do these results match up to non-minority consumers? What are we really looking at here and how do Asians compare to Whites to Blacks to Hispanics? Maybe these stats don't even represent a multicultural thing and maybe it is just an everyone thing?

I have requested a copy of the report so hopefully I can get some more in-depth information and provided update information soon.

What do you use your phone for? And do you think that your culture/ethnicity race has anything to do with it?