‘Shoppable’ entertainment and Twitter chosen adverts… what next?

October’s barely begun and already shops up and down the high street are stocking their shelves with Christmas cards and gift ideas. Much to the chagrin of the tenants at Siren Towers, it’s clear that the dog days of summer are officially over – our regrets to Florence and the Machine. So before you start making your list and checking it twice, spare a thought for autumn and all its seasonal goodies – leaves of all colours, Bonfire Night fireworks, and of course, our weekly social media round up (best enjoyed with a cup of hot cocoa and a bowl of warm soup). Bon appétit! 

EDF Energy did it to light up the London Eye during this past summer’s Olympic Games, Thomson did it to choose the name for their first 787 Dreamliner airplane and now Mercedes has borrowed a page (no doubt well thumbed) out of the corporate social media playbook by asking Twitter users to choose the outcome of their new TV ad. Handing over the storyline for their latest series of ads to Twitter users for a spot that’s due to air during this weekend’s ‘X Factor’. The ads centre around a musician and a professional driver, who are chased by authorities on their way to a secret gig. At the end of the first ad viewers will be asked to choose what the characters should do next, with the outcome appearing in the following ad. Users can vote on Twitter with the hashtag #YOUDRIVE. Here’s guessing that the option to switch to a BMW or Ferrari doesn’t make the cut…

Watch out Zuckerberg…earlier this week TripAdvisor announced it had bought web company Wanderfly to expand the social features of its popular travel recommendations and guidebooks. In recent years, TripAdvisor has been increasing its social networking-style features with things like ‘Friend of Friend’ reviews and deeper integration with Facebook to offer services like localized recommendations. In acquiring Wanderfly, TripAdvisor is integrating social networking features within its own service, rather than relying on an app within Facebook. With the world’s largest travel website setting a precedent to move away from Zuckerberg and Co., watch this space to see if other brands in the travel space follow suit.

And in another sign that that corporate world’s love affair with Facebook is quickly going south, the globe’s largest social networking site announced that it would shortly be unveiling data to counter its critics who have challenged the effectiveness of advertising on its site. Arguing that "clicks," the industry’s current measure of choice tell only half the story, Facebook says that it can now give brand marketers the data on actual in-store sales that their ad campaigns on Facebook have generated – a more useful piece of feedback than total clicks. Facebook’s push to provide marketers with more feedback comes as the company’s revenue growth slows and the effectiveness of its ads remains a hotly debated topic. All eyes will be on Facebook as the company presents its case at the advertising industry’s biggest conferences in New York this coming Monday…

US retailer, Target Corp recently premiered the first episode of their three part "shoppable" film entitled Falling for You; a twelve-minute romantic comedy featuring over 100 products from Target’s fall line that viewers could buy directly from the video player. Starring Hollywood actors Kristen Bell and Nia Long, the commercial/movie/product-placement hybrid tells the story of two young professionals working at Target tasked with planning a fall style event. Throughout the video, everything you see, including fashion accessories, beauty products, and household items, are available for purchase directly from your computer’s media player. Already winning rave reviews from media pundits and consumers alike, as brands experiment with more and more innovative ways to engage their audience without coming across as pushy, this type of ‘shoppable entertainment’ may very well be a window into the future of advertising.

Finally, an Intricate infographic survey has revealed that if you’re not using social media channels for employee recruitment, then you’re part of a dying breed (at least that’s the case on the other side of the pond as 92% of U.S. companies admitted to using social media for recruitment). The study also revealed that not only are US companies using social media recruitment strategies in droves but that 7 out of 10 employers have successfully hired a candidate through social media. If you’re looking for a job, Intricate recommends avoiding posts and tweets about illegal drugs, sexual posts and tweets, profanity, grammatical mistakes and pictures of you drinking.  Of course, you should probably try to avoid these things anyway, right?