FINAL FRIDAY:

So we had an Amazing final day of Twitmas yesterday where we had not just one but two over night stays in two of Glasgow’s finest hotels to give away.

One of our featured hotels was ABode Hotel in the other The Grand Central Hotel. Both offered one lucky Twitmas winner the chance of a free double or twin room on a “Bed and Breakfast” basis for an agreed date in 2012.

So congrats go to @Daviegardner for picking up the over night stay in the Grand Hotel and to  @seasider007. We really hope you have a wonderful, memorable (for all the right reasons) time in two of Glasgow’s best hotels!

CHRISTMAS EVE FINALE

So here we are on Christmas Eve 2011, and we’re delighted to be giving away a two-night break on the island of Arran at the Douglas Hotel.

This is just an amazing prize, because not only is it two nights at the hotel, but they’ve kindly thrown in breakfast and some free Bubbly on arrival too!

So for lucky winner @AlexBoyd you can take your partner, a friend or a family member and enjoy this amazing break.

Congratulations Alex, you’re the last winner on Twitmas12 for 2011!

Once again we’d like to thank all the people who supplied us with festive goodies to give away over the past twelve days. We’d also like to thank all of you who tweeted and re-tweeted for the past two weeks.

Please follow @Alan_Tennant  the Regional Director of hotels.tv!

Plus our lovely hotels for the final giveaways @douglashotel @abodehotelsgrp @bairdstravel – thank you so very much!

So that’s a WRAP kids! Look out for #Twitmas12 in 2012!

Happy Holidays one and all from all of us at NSDesign!

Last year, our Twitmas Grand Prize was a break at a beautiful cottage in France. Hard to beat, but this year, we think we just have.

Our 2011 Twitmas grand prize – isn’t just 1 prize.. but THREE. Giving more people a chance to win, and experience a real taste of luxury!

Starting on Friday (23rd December), we’ll be promoting prizes from without doubt, 2 of Glasgow’s best hotels – The Grand Central Hotel, and the ABode Hotel on Bath Street.

Both are offering one lucky Twitmas winner the chance of a free double or twin room on a “Bed and Breakfast” basis for an agreed date in 2012. If ever you needed a city break, now’s the time!

Then we move to Saturday – Christmas eve… and an exclusive offer from The Douglas Hotel on the fantastic Island of Arran! One final Twitmas winner will receive a TWO night stay, complete with breakfast, and a bottle of bubbly on arrival thrown in too! A perfect romantic getaway perhaps, allowing you to start 2012 in true style!

We’d like to thank all three of the hotels for agreeing to take part in this year’s Twitmas fun, but a very special thank you also to Alan Tennant – Regional Director of Hotels.TV Glasgow. Alan has been critical in securing these prizes, and so a massive thanks for helping us better our grand finale prizes!!

Follow @NSDesign on Twitter to ensure you don’t miss a thing..!

Best of Luck, and Merry Twitmas when it comes!

It was the cutest little Cardboard Radio and MP3 Speaker.

The radio’s design is simple, environmentally-friendly and I think it has great appeal.

Tune into your favourite radio station or simply plug your iplayer/ MP3 in and enjoy.

Love the concept of this one.

We thank Maia Gifts for providing one of these to  give away on Day 8.

We’d like to congratulate @grahamorriss for scoring this cool, simple gadget.

Now don’t forget, we’ve still have four more days of #Twitmas12…and I can’t say too much just now, but I can tell you that you’ll have some good chances to win some goodies on the final day. Thanks to some kindness of others, we’ve outdone ourselves this year!

Keep an eye on @nsdesign on Twitter to be in with a chance of some of our final yuletide goodies.

]]> http://www.nsdesign.co.uk/blog/2011/12/day-8-twitmas12-wrap-up/feed/ 0 http://www.nsdesign.co.uk/blog/2011/12/twitmas-days-5-6-7-wrap-up/ http://www.nsdesign.co.uk/blog/2011/12/twitmas-days-5-6-7-wrap-up/#comments Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:57:29 +0000 Thea http://www.nsdesign.co.uk/blog/?p=1835 Hey all, it’s Thea here again and so begins week two of #Twitmas12 – our Twelve Days of Christmas giveaways via Twitter.

To recap:-

Day 5, on Friday, we had our first ever #FollowFotographers on Twitter – with prizes from not 1, not 2, but 3 photographers!! Our wonderful photographers in question were: @AFraserPhoto, @MarcdeRidder &@RonYoungPhoto.

• alasdairfraser.co.uk – gave away 3 x photo sessions inc 7×5″ print
• circleinlight.co.uk – is donating 2 free VR panos for your website
• ronyoungphotography.co.uk – free family portrait photo-shoot & CD of the images

Winning the voucher from @AFraserPhoto for a free photoshoot & 7×5 print were @LCbeauty @SandraCub and @garyckerr! Well done all 3! Then, @globalaudit won an amazing Virtual Reality Panoramic images for a website from @MarcdeRidder. Finally our congrats to @tracyknixon – for winning the free family portrait photo-shoot & CD of the images from @ronyoungphoto.

Day 6 – It was a variety of hosting, domain packages and Master Class places courtesy of,  well, NSDesign…so congrats go out to @LornaK_uk, @auld_guy @Glasgowbud1965 and @headphonaught too. Well done to you guys!

Day 7 – Our colleagues from the Luggage and Bag Shop donated some electronic luggage tags so your bags will never be lost again. What a brilliant concept!  The two lucky travelers who will benefit from the tags are – @almac1965 and @UtopiaScotland

Now don’t forget we still have a whole week to go on our Twelve Days of Twitmas! There are some real Christmas Crackers still to come. You’ll definitely want to keep following us right the way through the week until the grand prize on Christmas Eve!

I can tell you, I am not a big sports fan (either playing or spectating), but once I caught one of these games I was hooked. I’d defy anyone to not have fun night – right there amongst the action.

Congrats go to @idgamez – who picked up those four VIP tickets. Well done you! Hope you enjoy whatever game you see – and hope the Rocks Win it!

So tomorrow, for something completely different once again – we have  not 1, not 2, but 3 photographers offering photo sessions.

First up we had some gorgeous scented candles from our friends at the Gifts from Fairies online shop. Today’s winners had to tweet their desired selection from a few different scents made by the Sandy Bay London Candle Company.

Wow, this was something I wish I could have won but alas – I was ineligible so this lovely prize went to @martyc1991 (Big Apple candles

Thanks to Creative Fairy @giftsff for taking part in #Twitmas12 and for interacting with the participants as it went on. A good use of personal touch there, I was impressed.

For the boys we had some  beautiful, unique, handmade thistle cufflinks courtesy of our friends @scotsgifts (Worth £46!) For those hoping to win the cufflink their mission was simply to RT (that’s re-tweet in case you didn’t know): >> “Handmade thistle gifts – made in Scotland from @scotsgifts #Twitmas12″.

Of the many who did – it was @busybee2011 – who won!

Congrats to both our winners. Well done!

For those not in “the know”, each year around the festive period, we at NSDesign come up with a new, innovative, “festive freebies” to giveaway through Twitter.

These goodies are often fun, novel, and relevant to our audiences. While last year we started on 1 December and ran it right up until Christmas Eve, giving away a week’s accommodation, this year though, we’re starting it a bit later and doing our version of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” um, I mean Twitmas.

Like last year, we had all kinds of great big and small prizes to giveaway and this year is no different! There will be more booze, a variety of gifts, VIP event tickets and more! Though we’ve most of it taken care of, we’re currently looking for just a few more donations, and would love it if you would consider donating something to the Twitmas cause!

For this, your company will be featured heavily through Twitter (linking directly to your site) – in Tweets and Re-tweets, on our blog, and likely on Facebook page too!

Last year, ALL of the donating companies saw at least a 300% rise in website traffic on the day they were featured on Twitmas, with some seeing traffic up x25!

See more information, on the mechanics of the campaign and the benefits of taking part, in our Social Media case study (using Twitter for Seasonal Marketing).

Contact Gary if you wish to be involved! We’re really looking forward to kicking off in just a few days! Be sure you’re following @nsdesign on twitter to be kept up to date with each day’s prizes and be sure to keep an eye on the hashtag #Twitmas12 for all the excitement of the campaign.

Happy holidays!

Each time I go, I get slightly more inspired to give a go to a campaign of my own to complete the film I started making in 2006, but continue to have one or two reservations about it…more for the effort required to do a good campaign than the lack of belief that it will work!

Yesterday morning was a Comms Breakfast talk hosted by Michelle Rodger the co-founder of a new Scotland-based, Crowdfunding platform Bloom.

Before we go on talking about that, let us start with the definition of each term because though they are often used interchangably they are  slightly different in definition and aim.

Wikipedia describes Crowdfunding as “the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations”.

Whereas Crowdsourcing is “the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to an group of people or community (crowd) through an open call.”

Crowdsourcing, (a term first coined just a few years back (in 2006) by Jeff Howe in a Wired Magazine piece called “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”) is more geared toward user generated solutions or content. Funding as it sounds deals more with the monetary aspect.

GO GO MAKE IT HAPPEN!

In Cannes @ MIPCOM, I had the chance to attend a small talk by CEO of what is arguably the second most well known Crowd Funding site – Indiegogo. Slava Rubin presented a lightning fast talk – starting with a great video of an example of what could be funded on Indiegogo (see video here Satarii) – which is practically anything (even IVF treatment or funerals!)

Ruben defined Crowd Funding as “a lot of people getting together who have a passion to make one idea happen”. (He ads that often you’re getting something in return, a “perk” or reward or something).

Slava says there are “four reasons anyone funds anything in life”:

1) …they care about the person, the cause or the campaign

2) …they want the perks – the products,  the service, the experience, the limited edition item, the ‘behind the scenes’,…

3)…they want to be part of a group, or something bigger than themselves

4) profit

The last one was not considered in this occasion, because it’s so hard to fund through the crowd anything for profit (“practically illegal” he says).

Slava Cites Factors in a Successful GoGo Campaign:

1) An Honest Pitch – be sure that yours is personal and engaging

2) A Video – Campaigns perform 122% better if they have a video on it. Note: not a trailer but a personal message (stating what’s in # 1)

3) The Right Deadline – Choose the time from 1-120 days. Choose a goal that’s fit for purpose, optimise for as short as possible while still being relevant and working. The average is 30-70 days.

4) Have Unique Perks – Make the perks unique, creative, low, high and medium. Make sure they’re not something someone can pick up too easily (if at all) elsewhere!

5) (like #1) Honest and Engaging copy in the campaign that is inline with your video and pitch. “This is who I am”…state your aim because, first and foremost, people want to know WHO they’re funding more than the film/project/product etc.

Slava’s Other Suggestions:

- be proactive – if you have four more people on your team, you’ll raise 70% more money then if you try to go it alone.

- do many updates, more than thirteen constitutes 65% more money raised than if you do five or less updates

- your number one tool for promotion is email, then Facbeook, then Twitter. Effectively “email destroys FaceBook and Facebook destroys Twitter” in terms of engagement and calls to action.

- be consistent – you need to keep asking, at least seven times or you won’t get it (the support). Be super direct. State clearly in the subject line “31 Days to 100,000 Euros for this Movie”.

He closes talking about “Social Proof” in the first 30% or 40% of monies donated is likely to be your family and friends (and presumably their spheres of influence) but as you get passed that you start getting what he calls “stranger dollars”. People who don’t know you who will start to contribute to your campaign.

The whole idea of Crowdfunding as I said at the start of this is intriguing. I’ve seen incredibly successful campaigns, and some much less so. I don’t know about you but seems every week I am contributing to someone’s film, or album or project of some description.

Though there are a few hundred of these types of sites, it’s exciting to see one launching right here soon, in Scotland, called BLOOM – Venture Catalyst (I love that last bit!)

If you have some money to spare, why not find some projects to be a part of?

Incidentally here are my Three favourites:

PledgeMusic – I’ve contributed to at least six albums on here this past year.
KickStarter – I have contributed to around four films this year on KickStarter.
Indiegogo – I’ve contributed to one (or possibly two) film on this platform this past year.

Special Mention has to go to:
Bloom – the one I’ll keep an eye out this coming year!

Maybe early in the New Year I’ll create a campaign of my own to complete my film and we’ll put the theory to the test…Watch this space!

]]> http://www.nsdesign.co.uk/blog/2011/11/using-crowds-for-funding-or-sourcing/feed/ 0 http://www.nsdesign.co.uk/blog/2011/11/logos-qr-codes-cyberlogos/ http://www.nsdesign.co.uk/blog/2011/11/logos-qr-codes-cyberlogos/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:01:11 +0000 Thea http://www.nsdesign.co.uk/blog/?p=1683 So a while back I wrote a wee blog about QR Codes. Well, I thought I’d follow that one up a bit, as last week I attended the October New Media Breakfast about them.

The speaker of the day was Jim Divine from Cyberlogo.

Citing the rise of handsets, Jim urged the use of QR Codes, specifically ones containing logos, to connect with clients.

Some great examples were shown -  such as Jim’s own Twitter-inspired cyberlogo (Pic right), one for T3 Magazine, and one for Cake Decor (Pic left: a chocolate chip looking logo) and a make-up company too.

Possibilities are endless.

BEST IN SCAN

If you’re looking for a good scanner (of the many out there) – Jim recommends i-nigma. (I immediately downloaded it and began scanning on my Blackberry. Worked a treat).

Or if you’re an iPhone person Optiscan might be the one for you. (From iTunes: “Optiscan lets you create, scan and share QR codes straight from your device”.)

Like the sound of that.

One of the great advantages of these QR codes is their versatility. You don’t have to link to just a site, you can link to your V-card details, a calendar event, an SMS or a direct dialer to a phone number.

Another advantage is you can, through many QR code creators, update the link as time goes to keep it fresh. There will often be a charge of this, so get your initial code from a place that will allow changes if it’s one you’re going to be updating.

Personally speaking, I find QR Codes challenging. They don’t always work for me and that can be frustrating. In fact on this page on Jim’s site I couldn’t even get them to load! That said, with Gary’s iPhone they often worked better. (So more fool me for having a Blackberry I guess).

Finally if you are considering using QR Codes yourself, take a look at this piece in the Drum recently to make sure you’re not ‘doing it wrong’.

Today I thought I’d talk to you about the YouTube presentation at MIPCOM – called “The Next Generation”.

Most of us, particularly those who are on the likes of Facebook and Twitter, watch at least one video on a daily basis. Well if the stats (below) in Patrick Walker’s talk are anything to go by anyway…

Since we at NSDesign love our “stats” – both reading them and sharing them, I thought this would be a good time and place to share some staggering ones with you:

ON YOUTUBE THERE ARE:

• 3 billion views per day. (a 50% increase from the year before). BTW That constitutes to about half of the world’s population watching a video a day.
• 600 million unique world wide views per month (from 31 countries and 40+languages)
• 400 million youtube views daily on mobile (doubled in the past year)
• 350 million devices that youtube is enabled for (smart phones, smart televisions, game consoles – “that’s increasing dramatically”)
• 100 million times a week – “youtube is social” – getting shared (an example is…)
• 300 years worth of embedded video is consumed on Facebook every day
• 600 tweets per minute contain a youtube video link
• 20,000 partners, specifically revenue-generating partners on youtube
• 48 hours of video is uploaded every single minute of every single day

 Youtube’s aim at MIPCOM seemed to be to align themselves with more revenue-generating partners, and possibly to promote their True View (skip-able) advertising and Playbook (which I’ve had for months and months, but like so many e-books I download, still sits on my desktop gathering the proverbial cyber dust).

Video is where it’s at and anyone who is a content creator of any type should be utilising YouTube. Businesses, musicians, video/tv/film makers – to name but a few – should all have a presence on there and be adding content to it regularly. But like everything in life, it’s a matter of finding the time to go from idea, to filming, to editing, to uploading, and only then promoting it.

Do you have a video channel? How often do you update it? How many subscribers do you have? If you subscribe to our channel, we’ll subscribe to yours! [Well if it's original content you're creating. I'm not gonna subscribe to people who only post babies singing or dancing, or cats being cute...]