Social media has sparked a range of pledges and charity initiatives that are demonstrating social media's ability to achieve social change. Tuesday 24th March saw the first ever Ada Lovelace Day and the campaign was a huge success. The campaign was initiated by Suw Charman-Anderson and was designed to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Ada Lovelace was one of the world's first computer programmers, having written a programme for Charles Babbage's "analytical engine" and had a vision for computers that extended beyond even his own. Suw pledged to publish a blog post about a woman in technology, only if 1,000 others agreed to do the same. This target was far exceeded, with over 1,980 signing up to the campaign. Ada Lovelace Day served an important purpose, by highlighting women's achievement in technology across the world, both past and present. A contribution often overlooked. Read the rest of this entry...

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Propellernet's super-duper online PR team has done it again with another great piece of online PR work for one of our clients King & Allen (bespoke suit makers). Seeing as the doom and gloom of the recession is all everyone is talking about at the moment, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to put a positive spin on it with an article and video interview appearing on the Telegraph's online Business & Finance section about 'how to dress for the recession'. You no longer need to trek down to Savile Row for a bespoke suit which could cost you in excess of £2,000 when you could make your way down to King & Allen and get yourself a top quality, made to measure suit at a more affordable price. Read the rest of this entry...

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Historically some of the biggest brand wars of the past have been in the FMCG market between the big consumer players, and Coke and Pepsi have certainly been no exception! Often in the past Coke and Pepsi have beaten each other up by signing up exclusive supplier deals through restaurant and pub chains. A fact I encounter on an all too regular basis. How often have you been in a pub or restaurant and you ask for a Coke only to be met with the response 'is Pepsi okay'? Then you try to be clever on your next pub or resturant outing and ask for a Pepsi, only to be met by the response 'is Coke okay'? Annoying isn't it? All I want is a soft drink - Coke or Pepsi, I don't care! Sorry a slight sore point with me as you may have guessed. This brings me to Coke's most recent one-up-manship campaign in the US, aimed to get one over on Pepsi. Soft drink brands Coke Vault and Mtn Dew (owned by PepsiCo) are fierce competitors in the US and Coke has just launched a clever campaign called...

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This week saw the culmination of a 48 hour Twitter popularity campaign between British Comedian Russell Brand, and the US talk show host, Jimmy Fallon. (Watch the tv interview here) Before the campaign began, Fallon began with a distinct 200,000 follower head-start but it was Brand that actually achieved more in the build up to his TV appearance on 'Late Night with Jimmy Fallon' where he plugged his US stand-up and book signing tour. A combination of blog posts, tweets, retweets, Facebook updates and video pleas resulted in Russell increasing his followers by 23%, that's an additional 17,000 people he can now directly inform of his latest tour, book, movie etc. Read the rest of this entry...

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This week has been full of big brands getting involved with Social Media. The beginning of the week saw Skittles launch their new website, which total puts the Skittles brand in the hands of social media. Then mid week we saw Visa announce their "More People Go with Visa" Campaign, which has a heavy tie-in with the photo sharing site Flickr. And that brings us to today and Amnesty International's Social Media time bomb campaign. Today, at 1:10pm saw a 'flashmob' style collaborate effort by Amnesty International, to raise awareness of violence on Women in Britain. Amnesty International coordinated the 'flashmob' on their own blog and website, with the aim to raise awareness of the issue across Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. You can read more about the Amnesty campaign by visiting www.oneten.org.uk. Read the rest of this entry...

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Skittles The confectionary brand Skittles, owned by the Mars Corporation and famed for its 'Taste the Rainbow' advertising slogan has taken a giant leap forward online and embraced social media in a big way with the launch of its new and innovative social media campaign. The Skittles Social Media Campaign Skittle's new social media campaign has taken over their entire website, www.skittles.com. The homepage has been replaced by a twitter feed, which is aggregating together all the tweets mentioning the Skittles brand. We couldn't resist experimenting with our very own Propellernet tweet. Read the rest of this entry...

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