Working with Fitzgerald Group

Shameless plug! - We’ve just come back from a very enjoyable day in Dublin with Stephen Williams, Group E-Commerce and Marketing Manager at the Fitzgerald Group
For those of you who don’t know the Fitzgerald Group – it is one of Irelands leading leisure groups with more than 20 pubs on the Emerald Isle and owner of three of Dublin’s most successful hotels.
They are the Arlington Hotels – at Temple Bar and O’Connell Bridge – the eponymous Louis Fitzgerald Hotel after the company’s entrepreneurial founder who continues to drive the business forward with his unerring eye for detail and his ability to drive pubs and hotels forward where others fail.
Anyway GREEN Communications has been appointed to raise the profile of the three hotels in the UK and send more visitors across the Irish Sea to enjoy the Celtic pleasures on offer at the three hotels. Two of them - Temple Bar and O’Connell Bridge – offer fantastic value for money with great accommodation and nightly entertainment from traditional Irish musicians and dancers.
We – Thomas Atcheson and Kathy Burke – where at the O’Connell Bridge last night and where blown away by the whole experience and we have all vowed to go back independently with our friends and family.
Keep an eye out for further news as we will be managing a range of promotional competitions, special offers and events over the next 12 months to ensure the hotel’s get the reputation they deserve among UK holidaymakers.

Jet2com Tweet to perfection

I have to tip my hat to who ever it is that is managing Jet2’s presence on Twitter.
If the campaign is being run in-house the team at Jet2 should be congratulated for embedding themselves in the conversation that is Twitter at a time when many established brands remain coy about all things social media.
Jet2, which flies out of Leeds-Bradford Airport, in Yorkshire, UK has always been quite bold in its marketing and has now created a real buzz around its brand with a recent competition held on Twitter.
It should be noted that Jet2 has only been on Twitter for a short while – about a week ago it only has about 180 followers. However, since it launched its competition (hashtag = #freeflightsfromjet2), followers have grown three-fold and are continuing to rise as follows re-tweet comments.
The competition is simplicity itself – on the hour today Jet2 is tweeting questions about destinations it flies to and the first follower to send the right answer with the correct hashtag wins a free flight.
A great way to create a buzz around your brand, develop your online personality and brighten up people’s Friday.

This is what I think...

Life's a pitch - stop doing it

I’ve been some what surprised at the number of pitches we are getting to our blog at GREEN from so-called blog engagement companies.
I have been approached in the past on this blog and have actively engaged with some companies as they have been thoughtful enought to have read my blog and understand what interests me. Then they started a conversation with me and eventually asked me to comment on one of their products which I was happy to do.
However, the vast majority of the “social media” companies get it so wrong - take this for instance which I received last week and was aimed at GREENblog.

I am contacting you from NAME DELETED an online video seeding company. We think your site would be an appropriate place to feature the new environmental campaign sponsored by NAME DELETED.

The NAME DELETED campaign is part of an ongoing project to reduce the energy consumption of NAME DELETED desktops an (sic) notebook PC’s by 25% by 2010 (a goal they have already reached a year and a half ahead of schedule). Please go to their site for more information about this great campaign.

To reach this goal they are launching video campaigns in order to create buzz, excitement and awareness online. These two pieces of video content encourage users to save energy by turning off idle PC’s, a small change to your routine that can make a big difference.

If you are interested in embedding either of these videos on your site, please do get in touch as we would love to have you on board.

The point is they have not read our blog. They have just seen the name GREEN and thought we are some sort of environmental blog - and have effectly spammed us damaging their reputation and that of their client.

Getting ready for Google's next wave

Have been very busy all day – and was planning an early night - but was really impressed with the latest Google project which sets out to rewire the online communications with a new product called Wave.
Wave is a web-based application that marries multiple forms of communication and collaboration, including chat, mail and wikis, into a unified interface. Everything inside Wave happens in real time.
It blows MSN out of the water as you can see a comment being made as the person is typing it, character-by-character.
Wave, which was demonstrated last week at the Google I/O developer conference and has been thrown open as an open-source project which people can play with and mash-up.
The thing I love about it is that it pushes over the old email order by allowing people to chat, share information and collaborate with one another in a whole new way. In the old email meme messages can become twisted and fragmented into side conversations and becomes more and more confusing. Sure, there are more structured tools like IM, chat rooms, wikis, group blogs or web apps built for threaded communications, such as FriendFeed.
But Google Wave is aiming to replace all of these with a rolling threaded conversation, real-time chat, nested comments, media sharing, link sharing and wiki-style collaboration into a familiar interface, complete with folders for keeping things organized.
I’ve signed up for the Beta – check it out here…