#FrostSorrell - It's Frost-Sorrell the TV show!

Every quarter at MEC the whole UK office gathers for a company meeting usually in a venue near the Southbank or London Bridge area. These quarterly meetings or MEC In Motion as they are better known are a way for the management board to keep MEC employees up to date with the company's development and progression. Each MEC In Motion tries to offer something different usually with the help of a guest speaker. However the latest company meeting saw the bar being raised to Olympic standards as we found out what our latest MEC In Motion would entail:

Jonathon Ross' ITV Studio set

On Friday 16th September the whole of MEC London made their way to the new set of the Jonathan Ross show at ITV studios. MEC Access made media history when they arranged and co-ordinated a live stream event featuring Sir David Frost, the ultimate TV presenting legend and the media industry's most successful business mogul Sir Martin Sorrell. To give the event an even bigger profile, ITV went on to film the whole interview whilst simultaneously live streaming it to MEC's global offices in 84 different countries. MEC employees all over the world were able to submit questions for Sir Martin through MEC's global twitter profile @MECideas while MEC London sat in the studio. This was an impressive example of active engagement - successfully demonstrating how a global audience can participate in live events through the possibilities of live-stream technology and social media.


I knew this event would probably be a once in a lifetime opportunity so I thought it would be great to obtain some exclusive content for my blog. After speaking to MEC Head of Branded Content Chantal Rickards I managed to get myself backstage and into the green room where I met Sir David and Sir Martin. After a congratulatory toast to celebrate the success of the afternoon I put on my journalist hat and asked the WPP Chief a quick-fire question:

Me interviewing Sir Martin Sorrell in the ITV green room

Me: "Google and Facebook are constantly in the news as they try to compete against each other. If you had to put a bet on who would win the race for media domination who would it be?
Sir Martin: "Interestingly in relation to your question, it was stated in the news earlier that Facebook missed its first half nationals...and Google + maybe starting to get some traction or relative traction... I wouldn't bet on either or against one another but it's just interesting that we're seeing maybe, Facebook coming under much more intense competition with Google +....but Facebook is obviously very powerful, it's the second or third biggest nation on the planet... so it's not to be underestimated but there's more competition for Facebook and vice versa there's more competition for Google..."


Although my time speaking to Sir Martin fell short of what I had anticipated, it was interesting to hear his thoughts about the two rivalling media giants. During his interview with Frost, he went on to say that the medium has become more important than the message - although I beg to differ especially in light of the economic downturn where we have seen more and more brands focus on customer value in their messaging - (e.g. M&S £10 dine in for two).

Other key notes from his overall interview with Sir David Frost revealed how his best piece of advice was not to have one piece of advice and to have someone they can talk to who doesn't have an agenda. Sir Martin went on to state that to excel in this industry you need persistence, quoting Saatchi & Saatchi's mantra "nothing's is impossible" which he said should be applied to every aspect of life.

To conclude, the day was a great success and a huge thank you goes out to everyone who contributed to the afternoon including Sir David Frost, Sir Martin Sorrell, the MEC Access and MEC Social Media team, and a special thank you to Chantal Rickards who was the brains and coordinator behind the whole event!

See below for a few of my favourite tweets from the day with the help of James Caig's Storify post http://storify.com/jamescaig/frostsorrell-with-mec

"MEC company meeting at ITV studios! David Frost is interviewing our very own WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell, live & aired to 82 offices across the world. No pressure.. @MECideas #FrostSorrell"

"We’re live, Sir David Frost is warming up the audience with some anecdotes before his guest arrives! #FrostSorrell"

"Sir David Frost, Jonathan Ross' telly show set and a company meeting? Yes please"
"Sorrell: 'I do have an iPod, but my iPad and my Kindle are my favorite tools that keep me in touch with the world#FrostSorrell"

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Vote by texting and calling...oh and now through Facebook

As the season of Reality TV kicks off, it comes to no surprise that social media innovator Facebook has partnered with channel Five's Big Brother to enable fans of the show to vote online with Facebook Credits.
This is the latest sign of how live television is being complemented by social media and emphasises even more the convergence of online and TV.

By implementing online voting through Facebook, Big Brother will be tapping into a new audience. A study by Thinkbox found that around 50% of people who watch TV also go on the internet at the same time. Social media has become a key platform for generating discussions about TV shows and even more so for reality TV (the X Factor and Big Brother being the most talked about) where viewers watch live TV and vote to save or eliminate contestants.

Discussions on Facebook groups set up by such shows offer fans a deeper engagement by forming a personal relationship with thier audience and enabling a prolonged interest in the show.
According to Peter Fincham, ITV’s director of television, this so-called “dual screening” behaviour by viewers “shows they care about what they’re watching.

Voting via Facebook will provoke greater online interaction through its ability to virally distribute and share what fans are voting for. Similar to when Facebook users 'Like' something, their friends will see this activity pop up in their news feed. Reality TV shows are a huge topic of conversation on Facebook with users regularly using their status update as a platform to share their opinion on contestants as the show airs on live TV.

Consequently the move into voting with Facebook credits seems like a natural step forward - but how will it work?
Voting will occur through a specially created app on the TV show's Facebook page. Similar to text/call to vote messages, viewers will be prompted to use the Facebook voting app by the show’s presenter on TV. To use it, Facebook members must pre-pay money into their credits accounts.

The success of voting via Facebook will be determined by the ease of use of the voting app and how well the new system is promoted both on and offline. It will be interesting to also see how voting via Facebook will implement real-time voting. More often than not (and I am a culprit of this), people tend to assume that their favourite contestant is safe from eviction and don't bother to vote. However Facebook will greater provoke votes as users and fans of the page see will see votes being cast in real time.
 
Voting via Facebook is about to change the dynamic of reality TV shows and it won't be long before this method is implemented across a whole host of TV shows.


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FYI Facebook Rocks!

82,557 is the number of status updates being posted every 60 seconds on the most successful global social platform. With an incredible 500 million worldwide users Facebook has outshone its competitors and in my opinion is a culture in its own right. If Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd most populous in the world after China and India. Facebook has changed the way the web has been built. In the 90’s the web was built around browsing, in 00’s this changed to search and now in the 10’s it is structured around discovering. It is continually being re-built around ‘people’ to help users to ‘discover’.

Now that I have wowed you with stats it's probably worth noting that I'm not a huge Facebook supergeek but have actually just spent the morning at Facebook's London offices as part of my grad scheme at MEC. The 2 hour induction included a Facebook overview and case studies exampling how brands have used Facebook to target consumers. A great example is Cadbury's campaign to bring back the Wispa bar which began on Facebook and prompted a huge press campaign. Despite being interrupted by a fire alarm drill the morning was extremely insightful and I managed to bag myself my very own Facebook t-shirt!...hmm potential eBay listing?

I am fascinated by the social media giant as it provoked real people to create Facebook profiles giving them for the first time a real online identity. This profile creates and connects you to your social graph, mapping your friends, interests, hobbies, relationship status, where you live and work and so on. This has enabled businesses to use Facebook as a global communication tool and offers one of the greatest and most trusted online platforms for brands to target consumers. News, shopping and gaming are key industries which have re-organised their marketing and communication models around ‘people’. For example with the use of Social Plugins, 43% of news sharing occurs through social media - dramatically increasing the immediacy of news around the world.

For the future: Although this has already rolled out in America look out for Facebook Check-in deals using Facebook Places!
If i could share anything with you about the greatness of Facebook it would be this video: What happens every 60 seconds on Facebook: http://vodpod.com/watch/5268426-60-seconds-on-facebook# Enjoy!


This blog has moved to www.laurarobinsonblog.com