Seasonality is very important to Interflora – online orders soar at times like Valentines Day and Mothers Day.

We created a set of dynamic banners designed to get maximum interest from consumers at these key times. The banners were built on the fly to reflect time of day, the kind of site they were placed on and any previous visits to the Interflora site.

Pinterest Overtakes YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ In Referral Traffic Rankings

Social Media website Pinterest allows users to share pictures, “collect items” and share things to a virtual pinboard with their friends. They have seen their audience has grown substantially this year. The site has overtaken YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace for percentage of total referral traffic in January, according to a Shareaholic study. Pinterest accounted for 3.6% of referral traffic, while Twitter just barely edged ahead of the newcomer, accounting for 3.61% of referral traffic. In July 2011, Pinterest accounted for just 0.17% of referral traffic, proving the site’s blockbuster growth. Facebook however remains the largest platform for referrals, accounting for more than one-quarter (26.4%) of traffic, 4.3% of which comes from Facebook Mobile. After Pinterest, Facebook is experiencing the most referral growth, gaining almost one percentage point in December. YouTube also saw more referral traffic in January than December, rising from 0.98% to 1.05%. Shareaholicsuggests the ‘Sh*t Girls Say’ viral craze may explain this increase in referrals. The Pinterest site had previously seen an almost 40-fold increase in unique visitors from July to December as reported by Hitwise.

Facebook to launch mobile ads

The Financial Times has reported that the mobile ads could be rolled out within the coming weeks on Facebook, following a series of “discussed proposals” between the social network and ad agencies over the potential for displaying its Sponsored Stories ad format in the news feed on mobile devices. Facebook rolled out ads in the news feed earlier this year, changing their name to ‘Featured’ in place of the previous title ‘Sponsored Stories’. The ads that appear in a user’s news feed work in the same way as Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad format, by showing a user’s social interactions with brands within the ad creative. Last week, Facebook announced plans to float on the stock market, filing papers seeking to raise $5bn (£3bn) in an initial public offering. The move could value it at up to $100bn (£64bn) – the biggest technology IPO since Google’s in 2004.

LinkedIn Hits 150 Million Members

LinkedIn have announced that they have reached 150 million members in their network, a 20 million increase over November. The figure was disclosed in a press release the company issued announcing its fourth quarter and full-year 2011 results. The company posted revenues of $167.7 million, beating the analysts’ consensus of $160 million for Q4.

________________________________________

CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK:  BMW 1 Series: Projection Mapping Racing Game

BMW South Africa recently created an interactive projection mapping experience for the new 1 Series, in the form of a social racing game. The experience was projected to an area of just over 100sqm and allowed participants to play via Galaxy tablets after connecting with Facebook.

Players times were posted to the real-time Facebook leader board and shared with friends after their race, with the best drivers in each location winning prizes. Although the idea of the experience is a great one, the execution and final game function appears quite slow and not very advanced to play with. Surely BMW should be producing a slicker functionality experience to represent their brand?

View the campaign here

________________________________________

APP OF THE WEEK: DOMINO’S PIZZA HERO 

Domino’s Pizza has launched a new gaming app for the iPad entitled “Pizza Hero”. It is a semi real-time advergame which lets you play alone or against people worldwide to become the ultimate ‘Pizza Hero’. The aim of the game is to create a pizza by placing topping and ingredients whilst racing against the clock. You score is based on the finished pizza quality and how quickly you made it. The more you play and progress the tougher it gets. The real-world nature of the app is what makes it very forward and inviting for users to engage and compete with others. It is something tangible that you could actually physically make and that’s got an appeal to the realness of the gaming concept.

View the video here

Visit the app’s site here

________________________________________

INFOGRAPHIC OF THE WEEK:

How to get more clicks on Twitter - view here

Chevrolet wanted to use email marketing to tell their customers and prospects around Europe about new car launches. Harvest created a set of robust email templates and a central email delivery system. Emails are created in local languages and local markets have the ability to include country-specific information like special events within the email templates.

Behind the scenes, we manage a rigorous testing regime which has delivered a steady improvement in clickthroughs and test drive requests.

When we talk about delivering the full value of digital, we mean value across brand experience and web usability as well as direct online sales.

A great example is our redesign of the Sage website.  The final result had to deliver a ‘breathtaking customer experience’ in line with the Sage brand guidelines. It had to help new and existing customers to choose exactly the right product to meet their needs. And it had to deliver good quality sales leads and support Sage business partners.

The visual design and copy are the culmination of a complex process that involved totally re-engineering the information architecture behind the site to create some clear new customer journeys, particularly for people who were completely new to Sage.

The new site looks great – and so do the results!

Tesco wanted to create a Facebook presence that could work as an important new marketing and service channel.

Harvest designed and built Tesco’s initial presence on Facebook and then worked with Tesco to publicise a series of great offers and content using Facebook ASUs and Sponsored Stories

Within just eight months from launch, we exceeded half a million likes, making Tesco comfortably the most popular UK supermarket on Facebook.

Experian wanted to use display media to deliver leads and sales for its Credit Expert service.

Our solution was to broaden the media mix, so that we could reach and educate new customers as well as driving core direct response. At the same time, analysis of the customer journey revealed the impact of display on other channels and a series of A/B tests on  the landing page improved conversion rates.

In a highly competitive market we were delighted to reduce year on year costs per sale by 50%

Britney Spears Becomes First Google+ User to Reach 1 Million Followers

More than 1 million users are following Britney Spears on Google+, making her account the social network’s first to break through the seven-figure threshold. In reaching the milestone, Spears retains her title as the most followed person on Google+, ahead of Google CEO Larry Page and rapper Snoop Dogg. Google+ is approx 7-months-old, so the pop star’s 1.5m+ followers still pale in comparison to the fan bases she has built on competing social sites: 16.2million fans “Like” her Facebook page and 12.5 million users follow her on Twitter. Spears surpassed 10 million Twitter followers in October, which means she’s gained roughly 2.5 million in approximately 4 months.

Social networking accounts for one in every five minutes spent online globally

Social networking is the most popular activity online globally, representing almost one in every five minute spent online, according to a recent report from ComScore. The report, which gives ten tips about global social networking globally, reveals that social networking now reaches 82% of the world’s population, representing 1.2bn users. According to the report, in October 2011, social networking accounted for 18% of all time spent online, taking share predominantly from web-based email and instant messaging.

Facebook Reveal Over 60 apps using its new Timeline feature 

Facebook users can use the new apps to update their Facebook Timeline profiles, which were rolled out last month, based on their interests. Companies involved include AutoTrader, Soundcloud, and Ticketmaster. For instance, News Corporation has launched a Timeline app for its The Daily title, which lets users share what stories they’ve read and breaks down what type of stories they’re interested in with its “Read-Graph”. Facebook users can also edit their Timeline content depending on who they want to see it. A post on the official Facebook blog detailing the launch read: “Soon, there will be apps for all types of interests, as more apps will launch over time. Whether you love snowboarding, gardening, hiking or knitting, or something else, there will be an app for you.”

________________________________________

CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK:  ISRAEL ANTI-DRUG AUTHORITY

This creative Facebook campaign was created by McCann Digital Israel for the Israel Anti-Drug Authority, and was the first to capitilise on the new Facebook Timeline feature. The campaign set up a fake profile for a fictional man named Adam Barak, placing pictures of his life side by side via the timeline to show his life with and without drugs.

On the left column, the photos show a year of his life as a drug addict, whereas on the right they show a year without drugs. The comparative photos of Adam display stark contrasts in his appearance and surroundings, with the drug-free Adam looking happy and successful, while the addicted Adam seems to have lost his girlfriend, job and home.

To view the campaign click here

Although this a very genius way to use the Facebook Timeline, unfortunately the campaign breaks Facebook regulations in the fact that fake profiles are not allowed. This is likely to be the reason the campaign is no longer live, and the profile page inaccessible. Although we are sure McCann were aware of this, despite breaching the rules they fetched an impressive million likes in under a week of launching, certainly creating a strong awareness for the cause. By working alongside Facebook, they could have possibly gained more mileage out of the campaign had Facebook agreed to such use. Or failing that agreement, they could have built a replica app which appeared visually in a similar way as part of a fan page, however wasn’t breaching Facebook regulations.

________________________________________

APP OF THE WEEK:  CRASH CORSAGE

“Crash Corsage helps you crash any wedding, anywhere, anytime. By collecting data from the open directories of personal wedding site providers, Crash Corsage creates filtered lists of nearby weddings. It then cleanly arranges important information such as what you need to wear, how the couple met, location of their party, and everything else you might need to grab a drink or a one night stand. Built-in challenges encourage users to compete against other crashers, while photo galleries and checklists let people show off their chops. It’s more than a crash course in wedding crashing, it’s Crash Corsage.”

To view the app click here

Some of us at Harvest are slightly disturbed by this intrusive app. Should this app’s popularity pick up, it’s likely the sites that it is scraping data from will build API’s to keep these intruders out. Whether this app is associated with the popular film release ‘Wedding Crashers’ is unconfirmed, but after the success of the film it is certainly likely to cash in and appeal to its millions of fans of the whom have had the idea of crashing weddings triggered into their lives. The clever use of social gaming adds to the success of the app, by letting crashers compete against eachother, encouraging use and competition. Social gaming is a powerful and enticing way of engaging users, allowing them to compete with others around the world.

________________________________________

INFOGRAPHIC OF THE WEEK:

Twitter 2011 Trends – click here

Driving performance for Go Compare meant two things – increasing the overall amount of quotes while simultaneously lowering the overall CPA.

As is often the case with paid search, God is in the detail. We carried out a major restructuring of the account, added in new negatives on different match types at ad group and campaign level, tested and refined creative and policed trademark infringements on Yahoo and Bing.

That sounds very technical, but our goal throughout was simply to improve the searching experience so that potential customers saw a relevant ad message linking to an appropriate landing page.

Getting a lot of small things right made a big difference to results. In a nutshell, quote volume increased by 163% at the same time that the cost per quote dropped by 134%.

This list ranks the top digital media agencies in the UK. Agencies are ranked in terms of their total UK billings from digital activities. Media agencies have been ranked separately from those working in marketing, design and build and technical disciplines, listing their audited billings rather than fee incomes which are commercially sensitive, and allowing for a fairer comparison by grouping agencies which rely on commission.

To view the full list click here