Is real world ‘sociability’ the key to social media success?

In a week when the brilliant That Is Not An Insight Tumblr reigned supreme for most of us, RPM’s James Poletti attempted to swerve buzzword bingo and bring together some of the most creative people working at the intersection of digital and real world experiences to discuss a social landscape beyond your desktop.

Tom Roope from The Rumpus Room, Pascal Auberson from Specialmoves and Tim Manning of Swarm brought a complementary set of perspectives and experience to the topic.

We started from the view that to activate participatory ideas and drive earned media, it’s simply not enough to pour owned media on the fire and expect it to take. Instead, we discussed the role of real world experiences either as the initiator of audience participation – capturing audience content in the moment - or as an outcome for content gathered and then brought to life in an experience.

Concrete examples come in the form of a couple of Rumpus Room case studies discussed by Tom: their X-Box: Lilly Allen campaign in which fans were recorded signing the song in-booth and their footage then translated into a video mosaic of user content. To the Google Gallery: For Everyone project in which user content was projected in a big media takeover of Times Square, with the big reveal being – when  your image showed in the square – which was then captured and shared back to you via social networks:

Talk Talk's X Factor campaign show's how it's done.

Much debate centred on what constituted the elusive and crucial quality of ‘give-a-shitability’ that would encourage audiences to participate and hit that share button, feeling good about the content they were broadcasting under their own personal brand.

Specialmoves showed a number of projects and R&D work in which audiences used smart phones and gesture control to control outdoor digital interfaces, such as their DIY City project:

DIY City - Empowering people to redesign their urban spaces

And Swarm gave us an insight into how content and, by extension, social media interactions could be brought to life in-store:

adiVerse - Making digital physical

The panellists also talked about the best ways to execute content and sharing interactions in the real world, agreeing a number of simple do’s and don’ts.

All of that and only one appearance on That Is Not An Insight (a fairly charming one, at that):

To find out more about the session or request content relating to it, just drop a line to rebecca.collins@rpmltd.com

The team in action

Hyundai Undead

Following last year's Hyundai Undead marketing campaign for the 2013 Elantra Coupe, the car brand has teamed up with "The Walking Dead" and its creator Robert Kirkman yet again. This time, they’ve launched The Walking Dead Chop Shop, an iPhone, iPad and soon-to-be Android app inspired by the show and comic book series that lets fan design their own survival machines. See this campaign in action on You Tube

Adidas Virtual Shopping Wall

Adidas has created the first virtual shopping wall in order to extend their shoe 'stock' in-store. Consumers approach the interactive wall, scroll through the available shoes and click on the model they like. The shoe is then spun at every angle so that the consumer is able to fully see the shoe's shape and design.

The information available next is truly phenomenal. The consumer can flick through the entire marketing story behind the shoe, including a description of all facts about the model (as detailed as how many goals were scored in the World Cup using it) and the entire technology that lies behind the design. They can even see what is being said about the shoe in the world of social media through live Twitter feeds and reviews that all appear on-screen.

If satisfied with their choice, the consumer is then able to order through a portable trackpad, and either pay on credit card or at the till. This is a really fantastic and exciting concept from Adidas, utilising digital technology to give consumers instant access to all the information they could need when purchasing.