The power of social media

Sunday evening, one of Sweden's more "non-politically correct" political parties, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, were voted into the Swedish parliament. This rose a lot of protests, and just a few hours after the results were official, several Facebook groups were created, encouraging people to demonstrate on Monday evening.

In Sweden's three largest cities; Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö, around 10 000, 5 000 and 2 000 people gathered in the town centres, protesting. And this was less than 24 hours after the results! The power of social media!

(English article here.)

Pilates, anyone?

The other day, when I was driving up Odengatan in Stockholm, I spotted some green balloons on lamp posts along the street. I had to stop and see what they were.

They were a guerrilla marketing campaign for Stockholm Pilates Center, who will host an open house event this Friday, to celebrate that they moved to new and bigger premises. The folder attached to the balloons said something like: "Help us puncture the myth. More than just balls, individual training for the whole body." I must say I thought the slogan was quite catchy, and today when passing by again, many of the ballons were actually punctured...

Catchy and eye-catching. And probably not too expensive. That's my kind of guerrilla campaign! :) Well done, Stockholm Pilates Center!

Make sure to also check out Stockholm Pilates Center's Facebook page!

(And if you look closely in the second picture, you can see my Glacéau Vitaminwater car in the background. Yep, that's the car I'm driving around in Stockholm all day long... :)

Chocolate!

In Sweden, around the holidays (Christmas in particular), there is a custom to buy boxes of chocolates named Aladdin. The Aladdin chocolate boxes are manufactured by Kraft Foods (the largest producer of chocolate in the Nordic area) and Aladdin has been sold on the Swedish market for 70 years.

Picture from kraftfoodsnordic.com

Next year, Kraft Foods will exchange one of the chocolates in the box, for a new one. So they created this website called Rädda Julen (Save the Christmas) where you can vote for your favorite chocolate, and the one piece that gets the fewest votes will be the chocolate exchanged for the new one.

I think this is a good way of Kraft Foods to engage people in their product. People are voting to keep their favorite chocolate in the box. Nice looking website too! And there is also another cliffhanger (besides from the obvious one of which chocolate will be exchanged), and that is; what will the new chocolate look and taste like? People will probably check back to find out... Now, go save Christmas; vote!

P.S. I voted for gräddnougat :)

Lindex goes SM?

Lindex is one of the biggest fashion retailers in Sweden. They recently announced that they will be selling some of their clothes on Tradera (Swedish eBay). The winner of the auction will get a code that they will use in Lindex' web shop to purchase the clothing item. A good idea to drive more traffic to their site perhaps? Way to go Lindex! Check out the Lindex Tradera store to see what items are up for grabs.

Lindex have quite recently started exploring social media. On May 4th they started a Twitter account, with news from their stores and from their web shop, but, they only have 359 followers! Even I have more followers than that, and I wonder why? But maybe it's just the fact that Twitter hasn't had quite the impact in Sweden as it has had internationally yet...

Lindex are also present on YouTube (20 followers) and on Facebook, (4360 fans) and you can easily follow from Lindex' web site.

Cute dresses are always appreciated, and Lindex did recently come out with a very nice collection of party outfits. What is not equally appreciated is that the dresses can only be bought up to Swedish size 42. Not nice, Lindex! Why not make the dresses up to size 44, or even size 46?!?

Social Marketing

I will read this "handbook": "Social Marketing Playbook" as soon as I get the time.
360i Social Marketing Playbook
It seems very interesting, but I have other interesting stuff going on! Will let you know as soon as I can... :)

How to build your pesonal brand (Swedish)

An article from IDG, describing in detail how to build your personal brand with small means, such as presence in social media. Unfortunately the article is only in Swedish, but if you are Swedish: read it!

Kreafon

A few days ago, when browsing the internet, I came across a nice blog. The blog is hosted by Swedish PR and communication agency Kreafon. I checked out their website and found it very interesting. They claim to be a full service agency, but I feel some things are missing. And by some things, I mean events. Events are a great way to enhance brand experiences, and combined with traditional marketing, a strong graphical profile and social media, a brand can gain great success with the target group consumers. So I think I will send them an email, offering my services! :)

So, this morning I did a normal Google search (normal for me anyway). I entered the words "advertising pr marketing" (but in Swedish; "reklam pr marknadsföring"). And I was a bit impressed to see that Kreafon, this relatively small agency (with only three full time employees) came up as the number one hit (after the sponsored hits)! It must be a sign! ;)

Though, I can't stop wondering why an agency who claims that they are good with social media and can help their customers build a stronger (online) profile, doesn't seem to have neither a Facebook Group nor a twitter account?!?

Swedish Communication Agency

Stumbled over a Swedish Communication Agency: Hallvarsson & Halvarsson. Their Online Media department runs this blog, blogging about online media, PR, and how companies can take up more space online, and how they should use social media. Also about viral videos, Twitter, Facebook, marketing campaigns and more. Interesting, but only in Swedish.