Gelattina

One of the more unique offerings we have here @ Gelattina are our Social Media strategies. We started offering this service because we identified a strong growth opportunity in the sector. Having among our ranks avid users and experts on the diverse social media platforms who also have keen marketing sensibilities, developing this product seems obvious.

Software Guru, a leading Mexican technology magazine, was holding it’s annual SG Conference & Expo, and being good friends with us and respected colleagues, they asked us to develop a SM Strategy for the upcoming event. After careful research we came up with a multi-tiered plan, which covered most major platforms and assured the best exposure of the event.

We developed and interesting before, during, and after campaign for SG, which was comprised by the following:

1. Before: First we created a Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter account for the event. Each site had a different use, and each was useful on it’s own way. Facebook was loaded to the brims with pictures and videos from past events, helpful information, and has links to various sites of interest. Youtube served mainly to host videos from past events and a teaser video of SG’09 and finally Twitter was used to promote the event and the content update on the various sites. Various pre-event contests were held on Facebook and Twitter, mainly raffling magazine subscriptions among the user base. After measuring the response to each of the sites, we decided to shift the strategy a bit and create an SG’09 dedicated blog and focus on Twitter to spread the word. Youtube retained the same function and Facebook became an aggregator of sorts for the rest of the campaign.

The week before the opening of the event, we performed a more complex content via our newly created blog. The prize were three tickets to attend SG’09 and there were three ways to win: by a random raffle via email, by attaining maximum RT of event related comments of Twitter, and finally by authoring an article for our blog. We had awesome response on the first two forms, probably because the later required much more work.

2.- During: For three days we provided intensive coverage of the daily happenings of the event. We did this writing comprehensive articles of select conferences daily on the blog, tweeting about the SG’09 and inviting the event goers to use the #SG09 hash-tag and  performed live-blogging with the Cover-It-Live tool of the major conferences. Additionally we recorded and transmitted live-video  feed, uploaded pics to the event’s Flickr account, and did random contests during the event. While we did fewer tasks than in the setup, this phase was a lot more work for use, because of the break-neck pace we needed to have to keep up with the event, which most of the time had simultaneous occurrences around the halls. It was also the most rewarding, as we had great response from people inside and out of the event. The coverage was very well received by the appropriate people, which is extremely satisfying.

3.-After: After the event was done, we did added more content to the blog. Articles, video, links and documents used during the actual presentation were uploaded for everyone to access and use. All these changes were reflected on the Facebook account and we also used Twitter to invite everyone to read the remaining articles and download the files we made available. Also we have some pending video we’re transferring into digital format for us to upload to the Youtube channel.

So that’s basically how the whole thing played out. It was extremely rewarding and fun to do, and we’re happy to be pioneers of the this type of coverage in our country. We’re sure as time passes by this type of activities will be more and more popular and as today, we’ll be pushing the envelope of what can be done when we mix marketing, creativity and technology.

Don’t forget check-out our coverage on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Flickr, and of course the dedicated blog.

Over/Out!

Los Ángeles, California fue sede para el Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) la semana pasada – sin duda el evento de videojuegos más grande del mundo – y entre la variedad de anuncios que se hicieron, dos de los más grandes competidores, Sony y Microsoft anunciaron una integración más profunda de redes sociales a sus servicios.

Ambos el Xbox 360 y PS3, ya ofrecen la posibilidad de tener un perfil “gamer” y de tener listas de amigos, con quien puedes comparar logros en tus juegos, invitar amigos a una sesión o hasta también simplemente chatear. Pero en el futuro cercano ambos competidores están desarrollando nuevas formas (divergentes entre ellos) de traer las redes sociales al mundo de los juegos.

Durante su conferencia del E3 2009, Microsoft anunció una alianza con Facebook y Twitter que se integraría a su servicio LIVE, dónde se vinculará el perfil “gamer” del usuario en el de las ya conocidas redes sociales. La novedad es que las versiones Xbox de las redes tendrán funciones exclusivas a la consola dándole un valor agregado que entrar por un navegador.

Por otro lado tenemos a Sony, que está intentando crear su propia red social interactiva llamada “Home”, en dónde cualquier usuario del PS3 puede crear un avatar virtual a su semejanza y navegar por un mundo virtual en 3D para conocer, conversar y compartir con otros usuarios del servicio. Muchos desarrolladores de juegos han apoyado a “Home” creando espacios basados en juegos y hasta han vendido ropa inspirada en ellos también. Que Sony ya tenga su propia red social no significa que no integrarán otras en un futuro; los altos ejecutivos de Facebook por ejemplo, se muestran entusiasmados de traer la aplicación a más consolas.

Es evidente que ambas compañías piensan que es importante integrar las redes sociales en sus servicios, y aunque tienen diferente acercamiento al tema, el fin es el mismo: Permitir a los usuarios unirse y mantenerse en contacto en el mundo virtual.

Personalmente pienso que estos hechos consolidan aún más el valor de las redes sociales en la era moderna, y es interesante ver como cada compañía refleja sus tendencias de negocios en sus decisiones en cuánto al tema (Microsoft muchas veces prefiere alianzas mientras Sony prefiere hacerlo propio). Dicho esto, no pienso que nadie decida comprar una consola u otra por que tiene una versión especial de Facebook ni nada, pero es un buen extra del cual nadie se puede quejar y que muchos usarán, dándonos más valor por nuestro dinero.

Quisieramos aprovechar la nota para informarles a nuestros amigos gamers que estamos preparando un torneo de Wii en las oficinas, ¡mantengase atentos para los detalles!

Los Angeles, California was host to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) last week – arguably the biggest gaming related event on the world – and among the myriad of gaming announcements, we could find that most of the big players (specifically Sony & Microsoft) were pushing some sort of SN functions as part of their services.

Both the Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3 already offer the possibility to have a “gamer profile” and friends, with whom you can compare gaming achievements, invite to a session or just chat. Yet, the companies are pushing further (and in different directions) their Social Network enabled consoles.

During their E3 2009 presser, Microsoft announced a new partnership with Facebook and Twitter for their Xbox LIVE service, which links the user’s gamer-tag with their profile on each respective service and offers unique functions only available on the Xbox 360, giving it an added value in comparison to accessing through a browser.

Sony, on the other hand is attempting to create it’s own Social Network called “Home” in which any PS3 can create an avatar to their likeness, and transverse a full 3D world, to meet, chat and share with other users. Many game developers have been creating exclusive “Home” spaces related to their games, and have even sold items related to their games for the users. Don’t count out future integration of established services like Facebook and Twitter, though; company execs for the sites have expressed interest in invading other gaming consoles.

As is evident, both companies think it’s important to integrate Social Networks into their service, and even though it’s a different strategy and approach, the goal is the same: let gamers unite and keep in touch in the virtual realm.

I personally think this just further legitimizes the value of Social Networks in the modern era and it’s interesting to see how each company reflects their business tendencies in their SN decisions (Microsoft does a lot more joint ventures than Sony, who usually try to make their own). That being said, I don’t think having a console ready version of Facebook or Twitter will make someone buy one console over the other, but it’s a nice perk to have, and all services are for free, so we can’t really complain about getting more bang for our buck.

As a side note, we want all our gamer friends to look forward to our official Wii Tournament! We’ll keep you posted on the details, wait for it!

Here at gelattina we are used to work with social web tools.

We use them to share documents, pictures, interesting links, follow up on projects and of course to promote our company.

So if you use some of these tools, add us as a contact and if you are not, give them a try!

Here are our profiles in some of the social web tools we’re using:

• gelattina @ Facebook
• gelattina @ Flickr
• gelattina @ YouTube
• gelattina @ Vimeo
• gelattina @ Twitter

Follow us, contact us, post a comment and let’s get social!

Remember those funny doodles that google uses to celebrate or commemorate holidays?
Well, here in gelattina we’ve got something like that…
Ok, we’re not Google and we don’t have doodles, but we have great designers and they make monthly thematic calendar-wallpapers instead!

For January the selected theme is "Fulfilled goals during 2008 and goals for 2009 ".

We actually picked the topic through a contest we ran on facebook during December.
The design was based in the new version of the site of gelattina

We have 4 different sizes to fit your screen:

• 320×480 (iPhone/iTouch)
• 800×600
• 1024×768
• 1280×800

Feel free to share it with your friends and family!

BTW, remember you can follow us @twitter or facebook .