The Feed is the love child of social media innovation and Orange’s brand values of generosity, friendship and fun.

Over the past twelve months Poke has delivered 37 campaigns, blending various forms of gift giving with social media, achieving deep engagement levels and reach  – at times touching an audience of 9 million consumers with one idea.

We particularly liked the collaboration with  the Rockabellas which turned tweets in to songs…

…and the hot chocolate delivery service which delivered a winter warmer to tweeters friends that needed a chocolate based pick-me-up.

To celebrate the first anniversary, The Feed is going to bring back two of the community’s favourite ideas of the past year: Secret Portraits, where upcoming talented illustrators draw portraits of the users based on their own descriptions; and This Halloween, where visitors will get their Halloween plans turned into classic Hollywood horror voice-overs.

Stand by for some more big impact mini marketing.

According to digital media company, Populis and research that it commissioned with economics consultancy, Cebr, brands are failing to capitalise on the spending power of non-English speakers.

With advertisers focused on Anglophones there is a growing gap (opportunity) to tap this bigger market.  The research shows how non-English speakers already make up the vast majority (84%) of global Internet users and collectively spend far more than English-speakers.

Other key findings included:

- 1.7 billion of the 2 billion global internet users are non-English speaking

- Non-English speaking consumers spent £225 billion online in 2010, or 60.8% of global online retail sales – £80 billion more than English speakers

- Internet usage rates in English-speaking countries are close to saturation with 73% of consumers online, compared to just 24% in non-English speaking countries

- The average non-English spends an average of £132 per year compared to £457 per year for English-speakers

The research shows that non-English language consumers already account for the majority of online spend and as internet penetration rates rise and disposable incomes in emerging economies increase, they will become even more important.

Here’s a natty infographic that explains the opportunity:

Called Xperia Studio, the campaign has pulled together all manner of creative folk, art hubs, surfers, photographers, hackers and even an astrophysicist to take the Xperia phone, make a short film and upload it the Xperia Studio – an always on content platform that showcases these brilliant individuals and how they push the phone to its absolute limits.

Here’s Illutron, a collaborative interactive art studio in Copenhagen.

Here’s Joshua Peak, a Hubble Fellow and astrophysicist at Columbia University, NYC.

The campaign also lives on Facebook and Twitter.

Chris Clarke, Chief Creative Officer of LBi, said: “It’s a real treat to work with a client so determined to break the tired old marketing paradigm. Sony Ericsson has been focused all along on creating something interesting and engaging. What’s so exciting about this is the way storytelling and technology combine to tell emotive stories. We’re excited to see where this will go in the future.”

The display ad market is taking off again. Much of this growth has been driven by new technology innovations, in particular demand side platforms (DSPs), which give advertisers the ability to manage digital media campaigns across multiple inventory sources – through a single interface and in real time.   Here, Erich Wasserman, co-founder and GM EMEA from MediaMath gives us his five things that marketers need to know about how this market is shaping up. 

1. Demand Side Platforms are transforming the display landscape, giving marketing organisations much greater control over vast pools of media and data liquidity. This provides two significant benefits: first, it bring new efficiencies to  metrics, pricing, placement and business results;  second, it provides great internal workflow efficiencies owing to the automation of what are manual processes today.   At the same time, richer media formats – in particular video, mobile and social media – have contributed to the renaissance in display.

2. The market is polarising.   With growth comes an inevitable shake-out of the display ecosystem which in some senses represents a polarising of the market: consolidation (largely via acquisition) versus the interoperability of technology, data, media and analytics providers .  Both approaches grow the display market and have advantages for advertisers and publishers.

3. Google is getting serious about display. The firm has made some high profile display related acquisitions including Teracent, Invite Media, and more recently AdMeld (an optimisation platform for publishers) for a reported $400m.  These power moves send out a clear signal: Google is serious about display and its intention to deliver a ‘consolidated’ experience to marketers.

Google’s VP of display, Neal Mohan, has suggested that the channel will grow to become a $200bn industry by 2015.   This is great for the display industry, not least because it has driven forward positive messages about the benefits of digital advertising over offline media, and of real-time bidding and campaign optimisation to marketers’ minds at the highest level.

4. Consolidation in the ecosystem?  As opposed to search, in which marketshare is essentially controlled by a single player, display is a far more fragmented and complex ecosystem, characterised by a combination of disparate publishers, technology innovation and entrepreneurship.  For this reason, and unlike search, it is highly unlikely that we will see a winner-takes-all market scenario.  This means that marketers have a great deal of choice as to what’s right for their businesses. With the right technology in place to enable plug-and-play, this is empowering.

5. Interoperability lays the foundations for growth and innovation. This space moves at break-neck speed, especially at its fringes where video, social, mobile, digital out of home and other emerging formats live, and it is this speed and technological innovation which is driving the market forward and generating its own momentum.  Moreover, interoperability between the best and brightest in the display space has a huge part to play and feeds innovation, allowing for flexibility and, more importantly, agility in creating an optimised service stack for each marketer.

Technology innovation is enabling businesses to unleash the power of digital advertising, revealing new and impactful marketing channels that grow revenue. With innovation comes smart software that makes adoption easier, enabling business to scale in this vast digital economy.

MediaMath is holding a panel debate with drinks and networking on the 21st of September at The Hospital, catchily named ‘from Mad Men to MathMen – get yourself registered for free here.

Follow MediaMath here.

The future of social is a place where we (you) are the media.  For example, our Facebook walls are rich media blogs, hyper targeted at the most important people in the world – ourselves, our families and our friends.  Brands need to add to these relationships and not interrupt them  ← this is wisdom!

Follow Tom on twitter here.…and Skive here.

Augmented Reality (AR) has only recently become a relatively well-known phrase, though it has actually been around for quite some time.  In the past year, AR has rapidly become available to a variety of developers – the technology evolved to be of use to millions of people, and is now simply able to sit in the palms of their hands.  Here Tom Ollerton from digital creative agency, Skive, gives us his five things that marketers need to look out for.

1. Forget communication, AR is VITAL – Although it may seem so, this is not an exaggeration. AR is used to give surgeons a better sensory perception of a patient’s body during complex operations, simplifying the procedure and resulting in more efficient operations with a lower risk factor. It has also been developed to work in conjunction with equipment such as an x-ray machine to instantly give doctors the information they need to make medical decisions and diagnosis.

2. QR codes are so yesterday -  QR codes are all too quickly becoming as vintage as non-colour mobile phones.  The supposedly seamless transition from the physical world to the digital by scanning QR codes with your Smartphone has already been snubbed as time-consuming and clunky. Google were one of the first to say, why scan a QR barcode with your Smartphone camera when persons with NFC-enabled devices can just tap their phones against the target and see the info immediately? Technology is also being developed to have phones act as credit cards – forgetting your wallet will no longer be a valid excuse.

3. Make way for Layars – Not a fashion statement, though sure, it could well be. Layar is a vision-based Augmented Reality browser that lets us see a multitude of information, entertainment and commercial layers. Fashion marketers have already adopted layars by allowing consumers to point their phones at an item of clothing and instantly see themselves wearing it.

4. The handset will become a burden – Hand-held mobile devices are, ergonomically and practically, not fit for future purpose. Expectations now require a lens through which we can view the real and digital world simultaneously. The Tac-Eye ST is a see-through AR enabled eyewear designed to be used in a variety of defence, security and industrial applications to improve the user’s situational awareness. Without a need for wallets or phones, it won’t be long before we have no need for pockets at all.

5. Know your audience – For those still struggling to come to terms with colour phones and 3G (and possibly even the CD-player) using AR might seem very far away. In actuality, AR is existent in more than you realise – even playing something back in slow-motion can be seen as Augmented Reality, as it is enabling you to analyse the scene more thoroughly than you could do in real-time. However, AR is something that has been much anticipated particularly by Smartphone users and tech-enthusiasts, and whilst it is a whole new path for marketers to venture down, your Nan is more likely to be checking her spectacles for smears than marvelling over the technology that is showing her alternative routes to her bus stop.

Follow Skive here.

Skive’s excellent blog is here.

I was pointed at a Facebook group called Glasgow Riot FRIDAY 12TH AUGUST 2011 last night by a horrified colleague.
As you can see; that group is still there.

Last night it was easy to track down the Group’s creator. He had been busy adding people and was given a credit on the Group’s wall. His Facebook name was “first name surname (hang Neil Lennon). I’m not sure why I’m censoring the idiot’s name; but I am. This morning his Facebook page was gone. He is, however, back already with another account, using his full first name and a sectarian violence image as a profile picture.

So, what happened? Did Facebook finally spot the incitement to murder on the original Facebook page and decide to take the profile down. I don’t think so.

It worked too. The second account of our Glasgow idiot returned to say;

The thing to keep in mind is that Facebook’s Groups are stupid. The system is broken. You don’t join a Group. The Group joins you. All it takes is for one football idiot to add you to a riot group and you’re there.

Rather pleasingly, some people seem to have misjudged the reaction from their friends who they added to the group, perhaps, as a joke. The community is in conflict, not everyone thinks it’s a “laugh”.

I’m not sure Facebook took action on the original account at all. I think it was burnt by the owner once the police were involved. I’m sure plenty of people are reporting the group and perhaps some individuals as I blog so, hopefully, Facebook will act.

Let’s be clear. This is not a social media encourages riots post.

Watching the dramatic TV footage yesterday showed me just how many of these misguided kids were using bikes to zip about. Indeed, I heard at least one call to the BBC News which made mention of how the gangs were using bikes to move around quickly.

I’ve yet to see any tabloid suggest that bikes encourage or enable riots.

I also heard at least one call into BBC News, from a journalist on the ground, who described gangs of youths with mobile phones and “Facebook apps” coordinating the attacks. All I can say is that he must have been awfully close to recognise the Facebook app on the tiny mobile screen held by the rioter. I suspect he was generalising, or perhaps misunderstanding, but either scenario leads public opinion down the path of inaccuracy.