Whether you’re flipping channels on TV or walking around town on the weekend, it’s clear to see there’s a movement happening. Commercials, websites, Facebook applications and people – everywhere – are in pink in support of people affected by breast cancer.

Many of us have been touched by the stories of people affected by cancer. With the advent of social media and social technology, connecting with survivors, discovering a community for support and fundraising online has never been easier.

A perfect example? The Tic Tac: Shake, Share & Care app on Facebook.

The app has two main functions, the first is to share how you’ve helped or cared for someone affected by cancer. Upon submission, your act of sharing will automatically donate $5 to CancerCares, care of Tic Tac.

Secondly, you’re invited to play a game of memory. The game encourages players to challenge their friends. That one action also invites people to share their own stories, thereby increasing Tic Tac’s donation tally – smart!

With this application, Tic Tac is offering a great example of how social technology can be used by brands as a vehicle for social good. We recommend visiting their application now, and sharing your own story. It’s hard to believe that one simple action can amount to so much.

Go on – inspire people who have been affected by cancer. Make a difference.

If you have two minutes instead of just one, please donate your extra minute to vote for both of Invoke’s SXSW panels, which address topics relevant to the subject at hand.

1. Creating Corporate Campaigns on Facebook – WTF?
2. Discovering Lady Kind in the Social Web

Thanks!

First and foremost, a huge congratulations to our HootSuite boys and girls for a fantastic and much anticipated launch of their freemium model. The entire team deserves a boat-load of credit after the time and work they invested in making HootSuite the best Twitter client. Period.

As HootSuite’s parent company, we’re happy to humbly state that there are some pretty exciting things happening with Invoke as well. A few of our fine ladies and gents are gunning to get their panel applicaitons accepted for SXSW 2011, so they can represent some of the amazing things getting done within our four walls.

… But we need your help!

If you are so inclined, our loyal blog reader, please take 30 seconds to follow the following three steps.

1. Create a panel picker account at: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register?return=/

2. Vote for each panel:

a) Creating Corporate Campaigns in Facebook – WTF? with Sian Pairaudeau and Andre Liem

b) Das Stiletto: Discovering Ladykind in the Social Web with Grace Carter and Nadia Nascimento

3. Vote every morning until August 27th, 2010

If you’d like a reminder, please feel free to subscribe to this Google Calendar, which is set to remind you at 9:45 every morning.

Thank you to everyone for your support!

Last week, Agency Record interviewed Invoke partner Dario Meli for the series On The Record.  The open format interview touches on Dario’s role at Invoke, HootSuite, Vidrollr as well as the future of Twitter and social media.

AR: Introduce us to yourself, your roll and your company.

Dario: My name is Dario Meli and I, along with David Tedman, run Invoke Media. My responsibilities are on the strategy and revenue generation side. Translation: I run sales and marketing.

AR: In one sentence, sum up your job.

Dario: When not working with my team to create best-in-class web-apps I form strategic partnerships with ad agencies and brands and make sure they are impeccably serviced*.

*Servicing clients isnt talk or nice dinners. It’s accomplishing business objectives and having a hell of a lot of fun doing it!

AR: You are a multi-venture man, so lets start at the core – tell us about starting Novare Res and the 2006 merger with Invoke Media.

Dario: This was very simple. Novare was more design oriented and focused on working with socially responsible organizations. Invoke was more technical but with the same core values. Complimentary skill-sets made working together obvious. It only took one afternoon coffee on a patio for Ryan and I to see it made sense. The rest was just paperwork.

AR: On to Hootsuite then, I know you are closely involved with the platform – take us from its beginnings through to its current success.

Dario: HootSuite, like all Invoke applications, was born out of a need to efficiently execute campaigns for our clients. It started with scheduling tweets and we quickly saw the opportunity to create a central dashboard suitable for a marketing team to really understand what was happening around brands from a social perspective. Monitoring, participation, and measurement have always been at the core. Check out the latest release. It’s just excellent.

AR: Vidrollr is a social video platform you are involved with, how does the platform leverage social aspects and how does it measure social ROI?

Dario: Vidrollr is a unique animal in that it fits into a few different holes. We’re combining it with traditional social media streams to create a social TV tool we call a Social Viewing Companion. It’s slightly under wraps right now but if anybody wants to see an excellent 2-screen approach to engaging and increasing television viewers they should contact me. ROI is measured using a few engagement metrics.

AR: What challenges have you overcome while both helping run a company and launch multiple platforms, what has been you most enduring lesson learned?

Dario: Running a small company with multiple products and services is certainly interesting but the biggest challenge is focus. Once HootSuite was allowed to completely focus on itself and no longer be distracted by some of the other Invoke products it simply rocketed forward. You can expect to see that exact same scenario at least twice this year with two different products. It is about to get very exciting especially for Memelabs, our contesting platform that is about to re-launch in a major way.

AR: How do you stay on top of emerging trends and keep your team informed and motivated?

Dario: Identifying emerging trends for the most part is pretty easy. Anybody can talk about whats going to be hot. Invoke excels in the execution within the context of the trends. We create excellent tools that address the needs of marketers who want to capitalize on the emerging trends, thereby getting a jump on competition, looking cool, and actually accomplishing business goals.

Keeping the team motivated and excited comes from the drive to make the best products available. They all have a voice and a say in the matter and each person contributes their absolute best. I couldn’t be more proud of the people I work with.

AR: Being a true twitterati, with such a unique view on the platform – where do you see it going next?

Dario: Twitter is wrapping things up and taking more control of their platform. Good for them! Tighter restrictions allow for more innovation, not less. Long gone are the days of simply producing another means of tweeting. There is no value in that. So what is next? It’s clear that Twitter has serious ambitions in the geo space, that’s no mystery, but I am as excited as anybody to see if they can take it to a new level and not merely replicate/integrate existing check-in style functionality. That would be boring.

AR: Will Twitter see rivals in the future?

Dario: Even back in the day when they were down as much as up nobody could unseat them. I would say that anybody posing a serious threat to Twitter will have to come from a completely different place.

…

AR: Leave us with a little inspiration or word of wisdom for our readers:

Dario: Ha, I’m going straight-up corny on this one but it’s legit: be genuine, be excellent. There is no more room in this world for half-assed attitudes or products. Have an opinion, don’t be afraid to offend but don’t be afraid to sway either. Fluidity reigns supreme but there is a fine line between being fluid and being irrelevant.

Saving some of the best questions for last, Agency Record seeks out Dario’s views on the future of Twitter and social media.  Be sure to check out the full article here and feel free to leave Dario your questions & comments below.

Want more information regarding Invoke’s Social Viewing Companion, Vidrollr, memelabs or our social media services? Contact us here.

image from Mashable.com

This is Part 2 of a two part series focusing on Facebook’s API and using it to create Facebook applications for brands.

With Invoke’s latest application, we were able to develop a highly customized application that maintained the client’s branding and integrated nicely into Facebook’s framework.  The client Invoke was working with already had a Facebook Fan page with a large number of fans but they needed to give their campaign a boost and make the fan page more dynamic and engaging for their loyal fan base.  Invoke saw this challenge and suggested the solution – add an completely customized app seamlessly through a new tab on the fan page.

How did we do it?  By utilizing FBML (Facebook Markup Language), our team created a user experience that made it apparent this application reflected the clients brand within Facebook.  A major challenge was determining what data was available from the API.  For example, we created an interactive Flash Map that allows users to post events on a map that feed into the Facebook database.  On paper it was a simple task, but the solution proved to be much more complex as the format of the API data was not as expected.  Other aspects of development went smoother than expected.  The application uses Flash to load videos and display a counter for donations.  Because Facebook’s API provides strong support for Flash, these flash pieces were easily reusable as “widgets” that could be posted onto Walls and News Streams.

All of these small details enhanced the user experience for both primary users of the application, and passive users who see the news stream postings.  It’s these “small details” that can lead to big results for the client as passive users “like” a posting, visit the page, become “fans”, and hopefully become primary users.  These metrics are used when determining a marketers ROI.  Within a few days of launching, the application we developed experienced this Facebook effect as the application received more than 1000 signups in just a few days.

In the end, our primary focus with Facebook development is agile development, which requires many iterations with wireframing, design, API research, and programming.  Put all of these together, and it’s a fine balance to launch an application that uses the latest offerings from the API and can be maintained for future revisions down the road.   A well conceived and executed Facebook application is a fun and engaging way to deliver a marketing message or organizational facts. The interactive factor (which is demonstrably important for Facebook users) mobilizes existing fans and turns them into active promoters of your message, which in turn builds the fanbase.  These brand ambassadors will then share and interact via the application and the messaging spreads.

Glee first stepped on the musical theater television screen nearly one year ago (May 2009). As a television show, their marketing efforts were one of the first to push for a dominant online presence.  They recognized the shift from passive to interactive TV and were one of the first television shows to direct viewers online. This occured via blogs and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, with fans taking up the charge on other social media sites like Tumblr.

CNN and the NYMag both wrote articles regarding Glee’s marketing campaign, the first framing it as ‘risky’ and the second as ‘unique’. Really, were teaser videos and online campaigns considered risky just last year?

“What Fox did last spring was something totally new that had never been done,” said Ed Martin, a television critic who writes for JackMyers.com. “Particularly for those networks that skew younger such as Fox, CW and ABC to an extent, they are going to have to really promote all of their shows all year long and find new ways to keep them in front of their viewers and remind them that they are there.”

Prime time TV is getting into interactive (or ’social’) TV by maintaining social media sites meant to heighten the viewers experience with the story and the characters they’ve created…. and prime time TV  isn’t the only one. By leveraging the social web, Gleeks (Glee + geeks = uber-fans) have more media to digest and more fun to be had than ever before. However, social networks aren’t the only places viewers can satiate their thirst, many social applications are finding their way to the market, such as our video conversation application Vidrollr designed to facilitate online conversations about anything from episode reviews to question & answer sessions with characters from the actual show.

The CW Network offers another great example, claiming their programs are TV to Talk About. Their site is a place where viewers can discuss their favourite parts of an episode online and interact with video extras, behind the scenes clips, photos, forums, music and more.

Glee’s marketing efforts seem to be paying off – the muscial theatre show has been a huge hit. According to Zap2it, last Tuesday the FOX series scored the biggest audience in its short history, going from cult favorite to a top-20 show in the span of one hour. The headline numbers are 13.66 million viewers — more than 5 million above its season average of 7.95 million — and a 5.6 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic, a bump of two full points over its fall run.

Be sure to follow in all the Glee action.

Glee uses HootSuite! @gleeonfox

Facebook.com/Glee

Are you a Gleek?