The efforts babies go to in order to overcome everyday challenges – like learning to crawl, walk and balance—are world class in their effort and determination. To celebrate these little athletes and their unique spirit of play, Pampers partnered with two-time Olympic Games Gold Medalist (Beach Volleyball) and Team USA Hopeful, Kerri Walsh and her family, including husband, Casey Jennings, and sons, Joseph and Sundance as they make their way to the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Pampers announced the partnership with Kerri and her family in conjunction with the brand’s roll-out of new Limited Edition “USA” diapers and wipes, which hit shelves in April. The CitizenPaine team helped drive widespread awareness and media buzz of these engagements at launch via an in-depth media day, which included a blend of sit-down and editorial phone interviews with Kerri, as well as live and taped television segments. To date, stories have run in prominent national news outlets including the likes of ABC News Now, Associated Press, BetterTV,  ESPN.com, Reuters, The View, and Yahoo! Sports.

To extend excitement even further, starting on April 16th, parents will also have the opportunity to log on to the Pampers Facebook page, visit the special “Spirit of Play” tab, and enter for a chance to win exciting prizes, including packs of the new Pampers “USA” products, signed paraphernalia from Kerri Walsh, and even a chance at winning a year’s supply of diapers and an all-inclusive trip for their family to attend the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Working with Kerri has been a complete joy and the CitizenPaine and Pampers team will certainly be cheering for her all the way to London!

Damien Lefebvre a sans aucun doute su capter notre attention. Grâce à sa présentation, nous avons pu mieux saisir l’importance que prendra, dans le futur, le fait de mettre en place une API pour mieux partager ses données. À cet effet, plusieurs exemples concluants d’organisations, qui ont accepté de libérer leurs données afin que n’importe qui puisse les utiliser pour ensuite les diffuser via des applications, nous ont été présentés. 

La Ville de San Francisco offre d’ailleurs un outil de géolocalisation des délits qui ont eu lieu sur son territoire (utile pour le choix du quartier de votre future maison!) alors que SparkleDine répertorie les restaurants à propreté douteuse… Très pratique! SF Park, un autre exemple éloquent du succès de la libération des données, est une application qui vous indique, quant à elle, les places de stationnement disponibles ainsi que les frais à débourser pour se garer. Vous voulez un exemple purement québécois? Zonecone.ca vous rendra certainement la vie plus facile au cours des prochaines années qui s’annoncent fort chargées côté travaux routiers.

Faut-il donner toutes nos précieuses informations gratuitement? D’après Damien Lefebvre, pas nécessairement.

L’ouverture des données peut se faire en partie, progressivement et même de façon payante. Il est donc très important de réfléchir aux modalités et à la façon d’ouvrir nos données sur le monde lorsque l’occasion se présente.  Définir un modèle de tarification, analyser la façon dont se connectent les gens avant de faire la refonte d’un site et adapter notre information aux multiples plateformes existantes aujourd’hui (IPad, IPhone, PC, etc.) sont d’ailleurs trois précieux conseils que Damien Lefebvre a tenu à nous communiquer.

Pour conclure, Henri-François Gautrin a présenté, de façon très sommaire puisque le rapport n’a pas encore été rendu public, son rapport «Gouverner autrement – Comment le Web 2.0 améliorera-t-il les services aux citoyens?». Ce rapport vise à intégrer, au sein du gouvernement, une forme de participation citoyenne via les médias sociaux. Pour le député de Verdun, ce projet n’est pas qu’un simple projet technologique, mais bien un projet de mutation sociale, un projet où la transparence, la collaboration et la participation du public seraient à l’honneur.

Bref, un projet de bien grande envergure qui, espérons-le, passera peu à peu de la théorie à la pratique!

Kloé Marchand
Conseillère en relations publiques, Citoyen Optimum

See it in its full glory on our Citizen Brando Pinterest page – share it if you like it! And if you aren’t already, follow us on Pinterest!

Uemit Oezcan
Digital Creative Director, Citizen Brando

At Citizen Relations, we believe that people of the world are bound together in profoundly common, simple ways.  We’re all members of a community.  We love our family.  We want to provide for our kids. We’re fiercely protective of our “home.” We want to be treated with respect.  And, ultimately, we want a purpose – to be part of something greater than ourselves.

Can good be more than just greed? I’d like to think so but first we’ll need to do some soul searching about how we, as an industry, approach the subject.  Social impact must regain its rightful position as the primary purpose of CSR – not reputation-building.  By focusing on actions, not words, and embracing a shared desire for a happier, healthier society, businesses can build authentic relationships with customers and achieve some amazing things. 

“Doing good” and demonstrating one’s citizenship can be a source of pride, build admiration and lead to meaningful change.  Activating that instinct is the center point of our work. 

Corey Langworthy is a Group Director at Citizen Paine

Pinterest
Unless you have been living under a rock, you should already know about this platform, we have posted about it on Facebook enough times! As one of our attendees described it at the end of our tutorial, it is basically an online mood board. A mood board that you can share with your friends and followers and use for daily inspiration. Once you sign up and have begun to make friends, you are given a ‘newsfeed’ of photos from the people that you follow and you are encouraged to pin (like) posts or repin them to your boards if you really love them! You can create as many boards as you like, about anything that you like! Some of my boards include fashion, food (mainly cakes) home décor and photography.

Brands have been quick to jump on the Pinterest bandwagon, with companies such as Whole Foods, Gap, Sony and Glasses Direct all pinning away. Rather than be a frivolous exercise, it is actually helping to build referrals to their main websites and blogs, ensuring their brand message is not lost.

Tumblr
Not as new as Pinterest, it has been going since 2007; it is still a platform to respect with over 13 million unique users a month! Primarily based on sharing content easily and quickly, it is a much easier-to-navigate blogging platform than its rivals Blogger and Wordpress. It allows you to upload images, text, videos and links as quick as a flash without having to know any html or code. Similar to Pinterest, you are encouraged to like and reblog posts, building engagement with other users and gaining a following of your own.

There have been brands on Tumblr for quite a while now, most notably fashion and lifestyle brands as they tend to have content that fits with the audience. Brands of note on Tumble are Target, who style their page like a magazine, and Coca Cola who post great original content as well as reblogging other relevant imagery. Whilst not necessarily helping with sales just yet, engaging with fans on platforms such as Tumblr does help to build affinity.

So there we go, a recap of what the digital team in Citizen Brando likes to teach people about in our ‘Lunch & Learns’. If you need more information or would like us to help set up one of your own presences on these platforms, please do let us know.

Sarah Austin
Digital Campaign Manager, Citizen Brando

It is true that some users actively seek customer service on Facebook, which in most cases largely appeals to certain groups of people since it’s more convenient than going through many loops on official websites, filling in multiple forms, answering a lot of questions and ticking a lot of tick-boxes. It’s instant and it’s “loud”, since a brand brave enough to allow commenting on their public wall exposes herself often to wild accusations, all while it satisfies a disgruntled customer’s urge to be heard. But this seems only to be a by-product. It is safe to assume that the majority of users mainly want to be entertained. And, of course, get stuff for free. And quite honestly, who wouldn’t?

A nice little project, we recently had the pleasure to work on for one of our clients, required a fun & engaging way to increase the number of page fans quick, but in an exciting and non-intrusive manner.

So we needed three ingredients: entertainment, rewards and simplicity.

The outcome of this process was “Spin to Win”, a fruit machine-style app that allowed every user to spin the wheels three times per day at a simple click of a button, enabling them to win instant spot prizes ranging from prepaid SIM cards at the lower end, all the way up to the latest & greatest smartphones. The user could only play this simple game by previously liking the page; and our attractive prizes very much encouraged them to do so. The app also encouraged users to return and play again by resetting the three credits every next day throughout the entire duration of the campaign. But we had one additional nifty feature up our sleeves: If a user shared the game with their friends on Facebook, we’d credit them an additional three spins. This last feature hugely helped to virally spread the game; story click-through rates went through the roof.

Today, we can proudly look back at a low-cost app, that had all the right ingredients, was conceived at the right time and on the right platform. It not only increased our client’s page fans by 10,000 and had many happy winners, but also has significantly raised brand-awareness through more than a quarter of a million story impressions within only a short period of time of just over two weeks.

This works on Facebook.

I’m sure we can help you too, so please call us, speak to us through email, message us on Twitter or say hello on our Facebook page. We do award-winning activities on Twitter too!

Uemit Oezcan
Digital Creative Director, Citizen Brando

Armed with my love for cakes, Christmas jumpers and thousands of blogging tips, I overcame my fears and created a blog about knitting, baking and general attempts at domestication.

I’ve managed to whittle down the thousands of blogging tips I found when I set up my blog, to give you my ‘Five First Steps’ for creating a successful blog:

1. Don’t Panic Its Organic
One of the simplest ways to drive organic traffic to your blog is to have a good domain name. The best domain names are those that tell a visitor what the website is likely to be about. This will also help your SEO ranking.

2. We all judge a book by its cover…so it had better look good
I must see hundreds of different blogs each week and I find the biggest issue is that many bloggers don’t put enough thought in to how their blog looks and what that says about their content.  Many blogs can look quite uniform and uninspiring; don’t let this happen to you! Find a clean, sleek template and make it your own.

3. This isn’t War & Peace…make it snappy
Most people don’t want to read an essay, they want know what you’re talking about, the point you’re making and they want it in a small digestible chunk.

4. Do it often
Be consistent! If your readers can’t rely on you to post regularly they’ll get bored and stop visiting. The more often you post the better value Google will place on your blog in its search rankings.

5. Share it with the world
In order to spread the word about your blog you need to make sure people know about it! Share the link on your other social media platforms i.e. Twitter, Facebook and even Google+!

So this is what the world of social media analysts, experts and bloggers advise for those folks with apprehensions about blogging. Hope it helps you take the plunge!

Here are some examples of excellent blogs:

Bedroom Factory Knits

Maison Cupcake

Katie Cakes

Layla Hatia
Junior Digital Analyst, Citizen Brando

For the casual football fan, or even the how-many-points-do-you-get-when-you-make-a-touchdown? non-fan, the Super Bowl provides something for them too. An opportunity to eat nachos and chicken wings (my wife, being from the Buffalo-area, has engrained in my head that the proper nomenclature is in fact chicken wings, not Buffalo wings), drink a few beers or your libation of choice and relax a bit on a Sunday night. A time for parties and Super Bowl boxes and socializing with friends – a somewhat rare occurrence during most Sunday nights of the year – but not this Sunday. Normally, Sunday nights are reserved for relaxing at home getting mentally prepared for a long work week – but not this Sunday. This Sunday we come together as a nation to let loose, kick back and enjoy ourselves and watch….the commercials??
For the majority of the nation, Super Bowl commercials have become a bigger draw than the game itself. And the numbers back this up. Over the years, the commercialization of the Super Bowl has grown in epic proportions - this year, like every year, NBC (the network broadcasting the “Big Game”) has completely sold out all available spots, this despite the absolutely ridiculous cost of running an ad during the game. In 2012, a 30 second Super Bowl spot will cost a preposterous $3.5 million dollars – a 17% increase and double the rate charged for a 30-second spot 14 years ago. But companies will continue to pay and the networks will continue to demand more money.

However, are we as marketers missing the mark? Why would a company spend so much money to unveil a Super Bowl ad only to then provide a sneak preview or even showcase the entire spot (or in many cases, an extended version) before Super Bowl Sunday? The answer may be in the ROI - why make a big splash on one or two days of the year when you can drive buzz for your product for a week or two, or longer? 

This year’s car advertisements provide a great example. In the race for the best “Big Game” automobile spots, this week we have already been privy to Jerry Seinfeld battling Jay Leno to get his hands on the first Acura NSX, Matthew Broderick channeling his inner Ferris Bueller tooling around town in his new 2012 CR-V and Volkswagen’s Star Wars-inspired reprise of their 2011 Super Bowl winner (this time it has something for dog lover’s too!). And the buzz is obvious – type in any of these companies into your favorite search engine and news articles abound, impressions mount, a clear PR win.
The debate will rage on – many companies use the Super Bowl and the week leading up to the Big Game as the perfect launching pad for a new product and while some experts question this thinking - see CNBC’s Darren Rovell’s recent tweet: “@darrenrovell Baffled by how many companies make the mistake of launching something during the Super Bowl. Better to own next week” – regardless, the Super Bowl will remain one of the most attractive destinations for marketing and PR campaigns, simply because of the sheer number of folks paying attention this week and on Sunday.
So when that annoying person at your Super Bowl party “shushes” the crowd during a timeout so he/she can hear the commercials – that same person who doesn’t know Eli Manning from Danny Manning or Tom Brady from Marsha Brady – I, for one, will try not to get too upset. This after all, is what Super Bowl Sunday is all about, right?

GO GIANTS!
by: Michael Kingston, Client Service Manager, Citizen Paine

How does this work?
When you’re out & about in your life - at a restaurant, an airport, sporting event - if you see someone famous -observe what they’re doing, if you’re close enough listen to what they’re saying, who are they with, what are they wearing, eating?  Any fun details that we can potentially put together and serve up as news to our friends in the media - and of course - we’d only send details to the media that are positive!

How does this ultimately benefit our Citizen Paine clients?
In our experience - when we share un-branded sightings like these - we are remembered by these outlets and contacts when we have our launch events or ongoing celebrity spokespersons that we need to get positive, branded client mentions for.  More often than not - these media outlets recall (or we gently remind them!) that we gave them a great celebrity sighting - exclusively!  And what’s great about sharing celebrity sightings with related media is that they really appreciate it - especially if it is someone who they cover on a regular basis - and often crates a win/win for us all!  These outlets are more likely to consider our client news - as we helped them fill their columns with fun news!

Some great recent examples:
Stacy DeFino saw actress America Ferrera last week, out for a stroll near Central Park - she shared the details with me - I shared them with the daily newspaper AM New York - the item appeared in the paper the next day!

I was on the subway on Friday evening - and actress Cynthia Nixon happened to enter the train and sit right opposite me.  I shared the details with the New York Daily News “Gatecrasher” column yesterday - it appears in the column today!

CYNTHIA NIXON likes her crossword puzzles. On Friday night, a source spotted the actress getting on the 1 train on 72nd St. clad in a “fuzzy winter hat.” During the ride downtown to 50th St., our spy says Nixon, now on Broadway in “Wit,” was “intently focused” on a crossword puzzle, and was even overheard “mumbling potential answers” to herself.

Christopher Gustafson, Senior Media Director, Citizen Paine

One of the pioneers in this space that I worked with on a P&G project a few years back is SocialVibe. The premise is simple – consumers interact with a branded unit, and are then rewarded with points. Their points can then be donated to a number of charities. The P&G program had incredible results – the time consumers spent on our unit learning about the brand was much longer than traditional ad units, and the click through rate was over 86%.

A new company called Crowdtap launched a platform at SXSW 2011 that has a similar concept – consumers participate in quick surveys and games and can bank their points for either gift cards or to donate to charity. What seems different about this is that it takes 5-10 seconds to complete several of the activities, so it’s really simple and quick. And for some reason, I keep going back. Crowdtap seems to have figured out that “stickiness” factor to get people to return, and has increased the gamification factor by rewarding you with levels and badges. I’m interested to see how this shapes out as the company gets more funding and grows.

Recyclebank also has a brilliant business model where they incentivize positive consumer behavior to help the environment in two ways: first they work with municipalities to incentivize families for recycling; then they work with companies doing environmental initiatives and offer consumers incentives for engaging in branded units on their site (very similar to the models mentioned above). I love how they are changing consumer behavior for good – both online and offline.

What I am hungering for with services like SocialVibe and Crowdtap is taking it to the next level – how do we keep consumers who engage in the branded activities interested in having a relationship with the brand over the long-term, and how do we increase our ability to target consumers we know really care about the cause we are working with?

I was really excited when Chris Hughes of Facebook launched Jumo in 2009. This was driven by non-profits on a Facebook-like platform that let NPOs have conversations with followers to motivate and activate. However, it didn’t seem to get much traction after the initial launch (my personal opinion) and now they are joining forces with GOOD on a new collaboration TBD.

The latest gaming for good initiatives is coming from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. According to Mashable, Kristof’s new game “will be similar to FarmVille, and will enable players to make micro-donations to humanitarian efforts worldwide as well as contribute to causes in other ways.” It’s being developed in partnership with Games for Change; a company that creates games designed for social impact, and will be played primarily through Facebook. I’ve interested to see how he’s able to target the type of person that cares about social justice, and keep them engaged for the long-term.

What social good sites and I missing that you like? What is the next generation of social engagement/social gaming for good? Tweet me @kgaffney and let me know your thoughts.

by: Kara Gaffney, Client Manager, Citizen Paine

image credit: