Anti-social goes viral for Radiohead

Social media campaigns aim to generate buzz through a chosen hashtag, number of retweets or general ‘noise’. However Radiohead’s innovative campaign around the release of its new single got people talking about the band’s social media existence, or lack thereof. Over the May bank holiday weekend Radiohead’s online presence disappeared. Their website turned white and all their social media channel content was gradually deleted causing panic among fans that the iconic band had split up. On Tuesday morning, fans were greeted with a number of cryptic posts across the band’s social media platforms with a short video of a chirping bird on Instagram, followed by a slightly longer animated video on Twitter and the release of their new single on Facebook. That’s one way to get people talking.

BOOM!

With the Invictus Games taking place in Orlando, Florida this month, ‘POTUS’ and ‘FLOTUS’ (Barack and Michelle Obama) engaged in a funny Twitter video ‘fight’ with The Royals to promote the games. The Obamas took the first shot, posing with three of their service people as Michelle Obama says ‘hey Prince Harry, remember when you told us to bring it at the Invictus Games’, after a brief word from the President, the video ends with the service people giving their meanest faces and “dropping the mic” saying ‘boom’. Following the video, Prince Harry tweeted referring to the Obama’s video as ‘fighting talk’ and said ‘you can dish it out, but can you take it?’ This prompted the Prince to respond with a hilarious video featuring none other than Her Majesty the Queen. The spoof video was trending on Twitter with Queen Elizabeth’s killer line ‘Oh really? Please!’ a favourite among Twitter users. This week, the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau also joined in with the Twitter video war and posted a video with the Canadian Invictus team with this message to the UK and US, ‘oh hey, I just thought I’d show our friends in the U.S. and the U.K. how Canada brings it your majesty, Prince Harry, President and Mrs. Obama’, before dropping to the floor for a push up, an imaginary mic drop and the signature ‘boom’. We are keeping our eyes peeled for videos from any other nations involved in the games…

New Day, old news

This week Trinity Mirror announced that New Day will be printing its last edition today, nine weeks after its launch. Following from our blog post when we learnt of this new title, we see a lot of our initial thoughts reinforced. New Day failed to bring new news to its readership which dropped from the expected 200,000 strong to attract only 40,000 readers. Newspaper sales today are falling as they are being seen to print what has already been reported online – we worried what exactly would be new about New Day? It is a shame that such an optimistic newspaper has to go but this is a reflection on how people are consuming their news and information – online and in real time. We don’t want to read about something that happened yesterday when we have already had the scoop online unless the print version can offer more in some way, such as in-depth reports, interviews etc. which haven’t been published online.

Rage Rover 

Social media was ablaze this week with photos of a white Range Rover Revere positioned outside London super store Harrods in Knightsbridge. This was not just any Range Rover however as the luxury vehicle had been spray-painted by an alleged ‘scorned lover’ with phrases including “cheater” and “it’s over” across the vehicle body in red paint. The TV network Bravo has been attributed to the incident, with some social media sleuths calling it out as a PR stunt for the Bravo TV series ‘Girlfriends Guide to Divorce’ #GG2D. The TV network has denied all involvement in the London incident and has confirmed that pictures of other sports cars daubed with graffiti on the streets of New York that are being shared on Twitter are from December 2014, when TV network Bravo publicised their new series. PR stunt or not this act of passion definitely caught the interest of the internet.