Have a great Christmas and an even better New Year!

Cybercom

Never work with children, animals… or puppets!

Don’t get us wrong, we enjoyed every minute working with the little guy (or girl?!) for the www.boscoisback.ie Vodafone viral, but his “bosca” was an altogether different story!

Coremetrics (provider of digital marketing optimisation solutions) recently released US findings showing that 78% of respondents of the Second Annual ‘Face of the New Marketer’ survey see social media marketing as a way to gain competitive edge. However, on average only 7.75% of total online marketing spend is devoted to it.

In comparison, an average of 33% of spend goes to online advertising and 28% to online promotion, design and implementation.

Furthermore the study found that the use of Web 2.0 (defined as user generated content and reviews), RSS feeds, podcasts and wikis are becoming more important parts of a complete online marketing program; and while most marketers recognise this trend with an eagerness to participate, there is no follow through on budget allocation.

Obviously, there is a clear and gaping disconnect between the desirability of social marketing and the budget allocated to it.

In the 60 seconds between 1.09pm and 1.10pm last Monday, more then £750,000 was spent online in the UK, making it the peak shopping moment of the year. Nine minutes after lunch began, office workers got down to it and flexed their plastic, with an average of 128 people every second spending £100 each. The total was close to £767,000 for the minute.

The top ten most sought after items are below:

1. Wii games
2. Apple iPod Shuffle, 1GB
3. Wii accessories
4. Apple iPod Nano, 8GB
5. No 7 Protect and Perfect Face Cream
6. Gillette fusion Power Razor pack
7. Champagne and truffles
8. Technika SH-340T Digital Camera
9. In The Night Garden — Iggle Piggle Dancing Plush
10.Tom Tom 1GB

The Wii and iPod purchases are to be expected at this time of year but No. 7 Protect and Perfect Face Cream is one that we were certainly surprised to see!!

And for those of you without children, the Iggle Piggle Dancing Plush is apparently a nursery rhyme laden program which ‘keeps young ones spellbound and winds them down before bedtime.’

Interesting indeed!

The Financial Times reports that with over 5million views (for original video on YouTube), Cadbury’s gorilla drummer ad became the most watched Viral of 2007.

The top 5 viral-video ads:

Cadbury – Gorilla Drummer

Smirnoff – Green Tea Partay

Ray-Ban – Catch Sunglasses

Blendtec – Will it Blend?

Lynx/Axe – Bom chicka wah wah

Who knows, Bosco for Number 1 next year?!

You can view the full listing at MarketingChart.com

We’re really excited about two of our latest campaigns!

Are you into POKER? Check out Guinness Poker Nights and send your mates a personalised video message to help them brush up on their game!

Do you remember BOSCO? Bosco Is Back so get your friends and family reminiscing with a Christmas greeting from that little guy in the box!

Thanks to our innovative and forward thinking clients in Diageo and Vodafone for making these viral campaigns happen.

Watch this space (as they say)!

“Facebook users face restrictions on the amount of chat they are allowed to carry out”. You would be forgiven for thinking you mis-read that but apparently it’s true. While you will not be told what the exact restrictions are on your chatting, if you do it too fast or too often then they’ll take away the feature. There is also ambiguity as to how long this may last; anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. All in all seemingly strange for a website designed to connect people socially!

Our thanks to Israel-on-Blog.com for this intrepid piece of investigation.

For many of us who already ready use Google as their homepage this may not come as a surprise. According to Hitwise, Google accounted for 65.1% of all American searches in November. Meanwhile Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received only 32.9% of search requests, collectively. There are a further 46 search engine options in the US but they only manage to occupy the remaining 2%.

This information was sourced at Marketingvox.com

A quick 90 second review of Facebook’s updated approach to privacy.

Our thanks to www.socialcustomer.com

Never mind stamp duty – the property market has gone DAFT!!

The most recent comScore data for the property sector shows that DAFT.ie has powered ahead in the online property market

The top 3 sites are daft.ie, MyHome.ie and PropertyNews.com. The trend over the last few months shows that Daft has recorded an overall growth of 16% – this is triple the category average and double the growth of MyHome.ie