Prosperity. Happiness Works.

Interactive digital agency Brando launched an interesting Twitter campaign last week when it called on Tweeters to tweet the hashtag #tweetsweets so its employees could eat sweets.

The idea came primarily from Beth Cocher, the company’s social media manager, who after a skill-share class about Arduino machines, wanted to use the technology creatively. Arduino machines are self-made robots that tie in with a computer using Arduino cards.
In this case, Brando used a gumball machine which dropped sweets every time somebody tweeted #tweetsweets. Occasionally it threw a ‘curveball’ and staff had to do challenges such as charades, which were streamed online via a webcam.
Brendan O’Flaherty, owner of Brando, says it showed what the firm does as a digital advertising agency.
“The campaign was launched around lunchtime on Thursday and ended at close of business on Friday. During that time we interacted with people from 30 different countries, as far away as Brazil and China.”
Some 5,000 people watched the webcam at the same time, while 61pc of those visiting Brando’s site were new visitors.

Irish online users are spending eight hours per week, or a whole working day, online, according to a new survey from Behaviour & Attitudes.

The Bacardi Together Poll has found that half of social media users confess that the last thing they do at night is check emails, text messages or social media sites. For 49 per cent of online users it’s the first thing they do in the morning.

The 18 to 24 age group spend even more time online – 11 hours per week, with a staggering 90 per cent of that age group using social media to co-ordinate their social events.

However, despite this and the fact that 38 per cent of the population now own a smartphone, we haven’t completely abandoned face-to-face connections, with 76 per cent of the 1470 people surveyed saying that you can only have meaningful relationships in person.

With so many users spending so much time online, it begs the question are we checking work emails more? And are businesses taking advantage of this growing obsession with technology?

A new Irish company is giving corporate brands the opportunity to engage more with customers online.

Huggity has developed a social media tagging application, which sees a giant panoramic, high-resolution crowd image being taken at a venue during an event. Users can then zoom into a crowd photo, spot themselves and friends and tag them on Facebook.

The application was launched at this year’s Street Performance World Championships in Dublin, and used at this weekend’s Oxegen festival.

Mike Sikorski, CEO of Huggity, says the application offers a great marketing tool for brand managers. It allows them to interact with their audience after concerts, sporting events, tradeshows and festivals.

It also broadens audiences as users share that photo with all of their friends.

Despite launching the application just three weeks ago, the firm has already received interest from companies around the world, according to Sikoriski.

“We’re already working on adding more interactivity to images, allowing people to befriend each other through images. There is much more potential there,” he says.

The Twitter campaign to get Ireland trending worldwide during President Obama’s visit has been branded a success by organiser PocketNative.com.

The aim was to have the hashtag #irlday trending and to gain publicity for Ireland’s tourism, hospitality and food sectors.
While #irlday didn’t trend worldwide, it was part of a major surge of tweets about Ireland on 23 May. The hashtags #obamavisit and #potusie featured prominently.
Statistics compiled by data extraction company, Knexsy, show there were 12,803 #irlday tweets on the day from across Ireland.
John Twohig, sales director, PocketNative.com, says with such a short lead-in time, the project was a success.
“We’d over 250,000 uses of the hashtag in the four week period, which was incredible. On the day we had the Irish Government on board, and got the US Government tweeting using the hashtag.”
Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Leo Varadkar, TD issued a press release, while comedian Dara O Briain appealed to his followers to get the tag trending.

Once upon a time people were amazed at the Liffey or even ice cream cones being dyed green on St Patrick’s Day. The latest trend, however, is for green apps for St Patrick’s Day.
One app which allows people to go green for St Patrick’s Day is Eco Bulbz, which calculates how much would be saved when normal incandescent bulbs are replaced by energy saving bulbs.
If actually turning yourself green – at least online– is your thing there’s a couple of choices. One is the Shamrock Urself Facebook app which allows people to add a shamrock to their profile. Of interest to the many Irish in Australia (and indeed anybody interested in Irish heritage anywhere) is The ‘How Green will You Go’ campaign from Tourism Ireland in Sydney.

Fans can share their ‘green’ efforts by posting photos, videos and comments on Tourism Ireland’s Facebook page. Followers on Twitter are being urged to use the hash tag #howgreen, so their tweet will trend with all the activities taking place. Already, one of Tourism Ireland’s Facebook fans has turned her iPad into an ‘iPaddy’, decorating it with shamrocks.
Other fun to be had is following the #paddynotpatty hashtag on Twitter or visiting http://paddynotpatty.com