Do The Green Thing founder Andy Hobsbawm stole the show at our recent SMI10 conference with a talk on creativity and its crucial role in building social media community and currency.

He framed his talk by drawing on the experiences of Do The Green Thing, a very smart (and very creative) sustainability movement co-founded by Andy.

Here is another look at Andy’s presentation. We’ll link to the video of his talk when we publish it on our site later this week.

The news earlier this week that Starbucks will start providing free WiFi in the majority of its U.S. stores has been portrayed by in some quarters as a competitive countermeasure to McDonald’s free WiFi initiative.

But another view of Starbucks’ new “bums on seats” ploy (alongside the launch of a new instore digital information network featuring content from iTunes, The New York Times and Zagat) is that the Seattle coffee company is taking a further step in listening to its customers and seeking to reconnect with them after a period in the early part of this decade when, by its own admission, it had begun to lose touch.

Ever since CEO Howard Schultz took back direct control of the company in 2008, Starbucks has demonstrated a sharp focus on social media initiatives that are recognised as best practice in the burgeoning social media sector. As Alexandra Wheeler, Digital Director for Starbucks explains, reconnecting with customers through social media became a priority at Starbucks. Embracing social media lets us “hear our customers in a way we hadn’t before. When you grow to the scale of our size hearing becomes more challenging,” she says.

Central to Starbucks dedication to customer engagement is MyStarbucksIdea. It launched a little over two years ago and embraced the principle that creating a special online network for Starbucks’ customers to share their likes and dislikes about the coffee chain would not only give customer service a barometer of online opinion but that the company could both learn and act on customer suggestions. The company established a rating system where customers would vote on what ideas they thought were really important and each month the top-rated ones were taken for consideration Starbucks executive team.

Though sometimes dismissed as a PR smokescreen in some parts of the media and social mediasphere, Wheeler insists that the success of MyStarbucksIdea speaks for itself. She notes that some 70 customer-generated ideas have now been embraced by the company even if some ideas take long to be acknowledged than other – free WiFi in stores has been one of the most requested initiatives by Starbucks customers.

A project as bold as MyStarbucksIdea only gets greenlighted if it has executive level buy-in. “It started at the top with Howard [Schultz] working with myself and Chris Bruzzo [VP of Marketing] to bring it to fruition.” But for Starbuck’s flagship social media experiment to have real value and not just be a PR stunt, the company had to involve all the relevant parts of the operation. That meant winning over the entire leadership team and impressing on them that by committing resources and people to MyStarbucksIdea – whether they were from customer service, marketing, R&D or even supply chain management – social media was going to make Starbucks stronger.

In short, if Starbucks announced it cared about customer ideas then it had to have the right people to respond to those ideas. “We had those in charge of espresso beverages listening to espresso ideas. Everyone had to be relevant engaging in the conversation,” says Wheeler.

It wasn’t an immediate lovefest. Some parts of the organisation took more convincing than others that customer insight offered a path to a better business. The leadership social media message took some “reinforcement” says Wheeler but slowly it permeated through Starbucks partners (as they call their employees). Today, Starbucks also has a highly active Twitter engagement programme and is at the forefront of geolocation social commerce, partnering with current media darling Foursquare. Two years on from the launch of MyStarbucksIdea, the company has six people in the U.S. involved full or part-time in community engagement and 50 people on a part-time basis working on MyStarbucksIdea.

For Wheeler it’s the combination of understanding that social is embedded in the roots of a coffee house experience married with the potential social tools bring for meaningful customer interaction that keeps her and company committed to social media. Most important though, she says, is understanding that social media allows the company to demonstrate its commitment to its community. “We have incredibly passionate customers who want to engage and this is precious. Our responsibility is to look after that relationship and honor it.”

Alexandra Wheeler, Digital Director of Starbucks will be speaking at Social Media Influence conference on June 22. There’s just a few tickets left so register today.

If there were ever any doubt that social media had come of age the upcoming World Cup in South Africa looks like banishing those doubts once and for all. All of the official World Cup sponsors (and a host of non-official ones as well) have been busy working on their killa apps and their connect-the-world viral capabilities while also looking to push the boundaries of Facebook’s design and functionality to connect with the global social media audience.

So how are they faring? In theory applying social media marketing to the World Cup should be like tapping in from five yards while the goalie has his shirt pulled over his head. After all we know that social media audiences crave both information and entertainment online. Yet social media is a fickle medium and there’s just as much chance that some of these massive campaigns will score an own goal.

Here then is the Social Media Influence guide to the World Cup official sponsors’ social media campaigns and how we think they might fare if there was a trophy for social media success.

McDonald’s

World Cup Pedigree – A relative late-comer to the beautiful game, McDonalds has been a sponsor ever since the 1994 tournament was hosted by the U.S.

How They’ll Play -  McD’s seem to be employing a social media catennaccio, keeping its creativity – in the form of an online fans fantasy tournament – locked behind the chained defense of FIFA’s own site.

Team Balance – They’ve packed the defensive but still huge holes appear. Fantasy football is about sharing and comparing but where’s the Facebook, MySpace or Twitter shareability?

Star Striker - Does Sepp Blatter count?

Social Media Success – Could be the New Zealand of South Africa 2010. Won’t make the knockout stages.

Powerade

World Cup Pedigree – First time appearance at the world’s biggest sporting event but can draw on managerial experience of parent company Coca-Cola. “Chosen by FIFA to hydrate 2010 World Cup players” goes the slogan.

How They’ll Play – Relying on science and tactics, Powerade has produced 16 mini videos within a greater YouTube video that illustrate, well, we’re not sure really but you can be sure some creative team is loving it.

Team Balance – Depending on the playmaking strengths of the YouTube channel with support from Facebook, viral videos and banners

Star Power – The creative director who got this commissioned.

Social Media Success – The Scotland of Social Media. Lacking big match temperament.

Visa – Go Fans

World Cup Pedigree – Visa have been there before but this is the first time they’ve unveiled a social media match planner. Luckily for them they’ve had some previous big event success at the Olympics (Go World) and have been trialing the Go Fans network in Latin America since 2009.

How They’ll Play – Look for a tightly controlled game plan executed through Facebook’s fan base. If Visa’s game planner – complete with ability to share with friends and leave match related comments – scores in terms of fun and functionality then following major team competitions may never be the same.

Team Balance – Go Fans will be supported by TV, print and out of home promotions but there’s no doubting Visa is banking on the lone Facebook “striker” to deliver.

Star Striker – You the fans

Social Media Success – Cool idea but will fans embrace it being packaged by Visa? Set for a shock second round departure.

Continental

World Cup Pedigree – This is the second trip to the finals for the German tyre maker.

How They’ll Play – Easy on the eye but perhaps lacking the squad depth of Adidas and Coca-Cola. Continental’s social media play is a creative and fun Facebook football kicking game called ContiTireKick that you can share with friends. Winners go to the World Cup Final.

Team Balance – Facebook-only campaigns are appealing for their prospective global reach but marketers should be careful about putting all their eggs in one social media basket. So far the ContiTireKick page has just 5,700 fans and there are some mutterings on the page that cheating is taking place.

Star Striker – Office workers with a lot of time on their hands. Hey, if Google Pacman can do it….

Social Media Success – England-like potential. A quarterfinal spot nothing more.

Adidas – Fast vs Fast

World Cup Pedigree – The Germany of sponsors (apart from being German of course), Adidas has been a dominating presence at World Cups since 1954.

How They’ll Play – A traditional, no nonsense tactical approach. Adidas is relying on a big budget TV ad  titled Fast vs Fast to sell the new F50 adizero boot and spark social media conversation.

Social Media Balance – The big TV play belies a conservative approach but Adidas also demonstrates some social media skill by launching the ad on Facebook and YouTube and adding a series of online only Q&As with the top players like Kaka and Michael Ballack.

Star Striker – Messi, Villa and Zidane make for a speedy and firepower-packed attack in this ad.

Social Media Success – Never write off the Germans! Surefire semifinalists.

Coca-Cola

World Cup Pedigree – A mainstay at El Mundial ever since 1974.

How They’ll Play – With expressive flair. Coca-Cola has taken inspiration from Roger Milla’s 1990 corner flag dance to exhort the world to upload their own unique celebrations on to YouTube. Part competition, part Funniest Home Movies, the winner of the Longest Celebration heads to the World Cup. Wonder if Robbie Fowler will be entering?

Team Balance - Boasting one of the most balanced social media starting lineups Coca-Cola can call on the support of a huge Facebook following (5.5 million) and a well-drilled Twitter feed.

Star Striker – Roger Milla of course.

Social Media Success – Who’d bet against a global competition where people upload silly videos of themselves celebrating.  Finalist.

Budweiser – The Bud House/Bud United

World Cup Pedigree – First sponsored at Mexico 1986.

How They’ll Play – Taking social media campaign creativity to a new level, Budweiser, as part of its Bud United movement, first held a global audition via YouTube to find 32 fans from respective World Cup countries who will live together in South Africa a la Real World for the duration of the tournament. Once the Cup kicks off Bud will create a YouTube reality show documenting the fans as they play out their rivalries en masse. As their team is eliminated so the house member will be kicked out. The two final fans will go to the World Cup final and the winner will present the Budweiser man of the match trophy to the best player.

Team Balance – All-out attack, Budweiser is looking to leverage the broadcast potential of YouTube in a way not seen before. Bud will be looking to Facebook to play a supporting role.

Star Striker – Just a hunch but in a Facebook/YouTube popularity contest Beate from Germany is going to do well.

Social Media Success – Could go all the way.

Editor’s Note: Want to learn more about social media best practice? Join our LinkedIn Group and enjoy a great discount on attending the Social Media Conference, June 22.

Amid the recent rash of Pampers diapers social media stories a new conversational project by rival brand Huggies has got somewhat lost in the mix. Which is a shame because while Pampers has demonstrated the need to listen and adapt to customer conversations in response to a crisis Huggies is embracing social media research, community building and collaboration in a manner that demonstrates social media’s positive potential rather than its liability.

Here’s what you may have missed: Huggies recently launched the MomInspired Grant Program that will fund entrepreneurial mothers across the U.S. to help get their child care business ideas off the ground. Kimberly Clark, Huggies parent company, is offering a total of $250,000 in grant money with up to $15,000 for each individual idea. In order to be considered for a grant, mothers must submit an application online by June 9, outlining “a unique baby or child care product idea that addresses an unmet parenting need,” according to the company’s press release. The program is explained through a dedicated microsite and community word is being spread through Facebook and Twitter.

Now, on first blush, this might seem a somewhat strange campaign for a diaper brand. After all, based on the traditional history of baby products marketing, you’d more likely expect Huggies to be running some sort of “send us your cutest baby photos” Facebook competition. What’s Huggies thinking by omitting cute babies and focusing on overworked, stressed out moms? Even Evian knows that babies sell product.

The answer says Steve Paljieg, senior director of growth and innovation at Kimberly Clark, is that Huggies has been doing a lot of listening to and talking with their target audience – the moms who buy their products. The particular reason? Kimberly Clark is on a mission to innovate its product line. “We do a five year business cycle and we’ve identified innovation that takes us beyond the core – diapers and wipes – into something new that defines us a baby care brand,” says Paljieg. Part of the research involved talking to online mommy influencers, one of who just happened to be Maria Bailey, a former Fortune 100 executive, founder of BlueSuitMom.com and a mother of four. “Maria is at the hub of a social media environment where moms are innovating with their own businesses,” says Paljieg. That insight, combined with an interest in the way the Silicon Valley venture capital market sourced innovation, convinced him that Huggies could both inspire its target market and foster its own innovation by working to enable entrepreneurial moms across the country.

The more research Paljieg and his team did the more they learned about the challenges that this small but influential sector of moms faced. He cites research conducted by Babson College showing that even though women in the United States are credited with starting businesses at nearly twice the rate of men, only about three percent of these female businesses get VC funding. Building on that research Huggies then commissioned its own study of moms and found that the toughest challenge faced by those who wanted to start their own business was access to capital and financial resources. These moms didn’t need VC-level funding. Most said what they really needed was small seed/start up money along with mentorship.

And so the MomInspired project was born. Moms can submit “innovative and viable business and product ideas for pre-natal care up to 6 years of age, designed to help make life easier for parents so they can better enjoy everyday moments with their little ones,” and Kimberly Clark will choose the ideas they think are most commercially viable the provide the seed money to get them going. This isn’t a one-off commitment insists Paljieg. “We want to form a relationship with these moms and watch their businesses grow. This is the VC model that we try and stay around as the ideas develop. We’re doing it to make their dreams come true but also to benefit.”

What the combined scientific and engineering brains in Kimberly Clark’s R&D division make of this customer open sourcing is anyone’s guess but Paljieg insists that a good idea won’t be looked down on where ever it comes from. He points out that the company’s chief marketing office Tony Palmer has responsibility over all the company’s innovation and so the silo mentality that often restricts social media insights to the marketing or PR team when they could have greater value within the whole company won’t damage the MomInspired project. He notes that there is an “incredible amount of openness in R&D and our innovation.”

Still, realistically, what is the chance that any of the ideas Kimberly Clark funds will succeed? Anyone involved in small business understands the risk of failure are high and the chances of successfully bringing a new product/invention to market notoriously slim – isn’t that why companies like Kimberly Clark spend millions upon millions on research and development?

Yet even if just a fraction of Huggies’ target community actually engage with this initiative, and even if the entrepreneurial chance of success seems improbable the project probably will be considered a success. That’s because (as its name suggests) this campaign has as much to do with demonstrating Huggies’ commitment to working moms as it does funding the next cool babycare product. “I hope [all the moms out there] experience the recognition that they themselves are inventive so that they think ‘maybe I can’t participate but isn’t this cool what Huggies is doing,” say Paljieg.

For Huggies, it seems, social media rather than necessity may prove be the mother of invention.

We’re pretty sure that Twitter has transformed before our very eyes over the last 12 months. Way back in, oh, May 2009 we followed a smallish group of friends, contacts and people whose opinions we respected so that we could enjoy a slice of their life and thoughts as expressed in nice 140 character digestible bites.

Today our list of followers and those we follow has expanded somewhat but what really has changed is the importance we place on Twitter as an information stream. It’s no longer a secondary, perhaps diversionary pursuit in between our obsessive scan of RSS feeds and news sites (yeah we still go to the homepage sometime, call us old skool). Instead, our Twitter stream has replaced RSS as our primary digital go-to for news about business and social media in business.

It seemed obvious that the way we were using Twitter was a media channel rather than a pure social network. Now this piece of research from the Department of Computer Science at Kaist University, South Korea goes some way to adding some intellectual heft to our anecdotal hunch. What’s more they demonstrate their research with a  lot of number crunching and mathematical graph/chart creation than we would ever attempt.

To tell you the truth, we don’t understand all of what they purport to show but, hey, based on our simple logic it feels about right. Is this how you use Twitter nowadays?

It was halfway through a conference presentation this week by Facebook that it dawned on me just how powerful the social network had become, just how big its own plans are and just how much it now has to lose.

Sure the rat-a-tat-tat artillery of stats sounded impressive: 400 plus million users worldwide, one third of the UK population active on Facebook each month with 50% of those returning each day, 100 million mobile users and, yes, 85 of the top 100 U.S. brands active on the network. But it wasn’t the numbers that made me sit up and pay attention, it was the confidence with which Facebook’s UK commercial director, Stephen Haines noted that major brands are starting to ditch their campaign microsites and make a home for ongoing customer engagement on Facebook because, to paraphrase, while microsites come and go Facebook was here to stay.

Now, the promise of longevity is a bold one coming from any Internet company. Facebook, of course, would seem to have plenty of reasons to be confident (its new moves to make the power of its social graph indispensable for the greater web merely underscoring its upbeat outlook) but social networking is a fickle business to say the least – just ask News Corporation and AOL, purchasers of the formerly high-flying MySpace and Bebo respectively.

In fact, the greater technology sector is rife with hubris. In 2000 AOL itself was primed to take over the online world after recording year-on-year membership growth just as fantastic as Facebook. Back in the late 1990s traditional media powerhouse Disney thought it had a smart portal play with Go.com until Yahoo showed it what a new media company was really about. And of course Yahoo itself was considered unassailable in search until Google and that algorithm took over.

I have no doubt that Facebook will doubt turn out to be more Google than Go.com but if recent history tells us anything it’s that there is no guaranteed long-term success in the Internet Economy (even Google knows this). This is especially true for Facebook, which prides itself in shaping business strategy based on the user habits of its members. For this reason alone major brands should think carefully before downing a jug of Facebook Kool Aid.

The current trend in social media business thinking is to invest more in the social places where people frequent (Facebook being a number one choice) rather than develop a brand specific social media platform or site that you then have to persuade the public to visit. When you see the interest Facebookers have in brand pages (Starbucks, for example, has seven million FB fans/likers) it’s not hard to see why major brand holders such as Unilever and Coca-Cola would prefer to interact with customers through Facebook and other social sites like YouTube rather than a campaign microsite with a limited shelf-life and even more limited consumer appeal.

This willingness to embrace change and release control suggests a fundamental shift in the way brands view social media. It tells us that what six months ago was seen as purely experimental has now become cemented as a fundamental part of customer engagement. Facebook, more than any social property, should pat itself on the back for making companies understand the power of customer clout. And yet, if it wants to be the go-to social destination for the next 10 years Facebook should also view the fickle power of customer choice (one it has harnessed so far) as a direct threat.

Facebook’s development announcements last week suggest the company understands that threat. By attempting to expand users’ Facebook experience outside of the network through its Social Plugins and Open Graph Protocol, the company is being blatant in its push to make a Facebook dominant part of everyone’s online life.

If it fails then you can be sure another new social network with news features will arise to woo the Facebook faithful. And when that happens the big brands will quickly flee to where their customers lead them. In the end, even Facebook friendship has its limits.

If this video starts off sounding like your worst social media campaign nightmare then stick around until the end for the sting in the tail.

We like it not for its print boosterism but for the reminder that successful conversation about a product or service is not about flooding social networks to get the most audience but rather connecting your product with the right audience….whatever media they are using.

Viral addicts, take note.

One year ago, Dave Cleaver, owner of Inspired Bicycles, a very small specialist bike frame manufacturer in Hull, UK uploaded a promotional video showing one of his sponsored riders turning street trial tricks in Edinburgh.

Forty eight hours later and the video had surpassed one million views on YouTube and the Danny MacAskill phenomenon was launched. Today, the video has been viewed more than 16 million times and Danny, an unassuming young Scot, has a sponsorship deal with Red Bull and has been feted by media all over the world.

“I knew the video was special because after seeing it the first time I had a lump in my throat,” remembers Cleaver. Still, as the 27 year-old two wheel entrepreneur explains neither he, MacAskill nor the director of the video, Dave Sowerby, a friend of Danny’s, had any sense of how much it would capture the public’s imagination.

“I’d been sponsoring Danny for a few years before this video,” says Cleaver. “I knew he was good but he was so far out of the public eye (for years MacAskill was based in the Scottish highlands) that I was the only one who would sponsor him.”

Inspired, like many small companies, didn’t have the resources to invest much in marketing but Cleaver knew that two tried and tested ways of promoting his products was to put them in hand of great riders and showcase them at street trial competitions and, increasingly, through social media videos.

He and Danny had talked about doing a video for a while but it was thanks to Sowerby who shot the video when the prolific rider could grab breaks from his day job working at a bike shop that it ever got made. And it was Sowerby who chose the soundtrack, the haunting “Funeral” by Band of Horses.

“We’d never cleared music rights before,” in our other bike videos explains Cleaver, “but when this one got one million views in the first 48 hours we thought, ‘Uh oh’ we might be in trouble.” There followed a tense couple of weeks as Inspired contacted Band of Horses’ record label to seek permission. Though as millions more people started tuning into the video spurred by huge media interest (we highlighted it in our YouTube Brandwatch column a few days after it was uploaded), the label saw the marketing potential and asked only that Inspired credit the track and offer a viewers a chance to buy it on iTunes.

The YouTube success was such a surprise that Inspired initially was in no position to capitalise on its social media success. For one thing, the company was only selling bike frames and yet they were receiving enormous interest from mainstream mountain bikers who wanted to get their hands on Danny’s bike. “We were completely on the wrong end of the market.  Had we had an inkling of its potential then we would have had much more product.” ” says Cleaver.

Yet even though Inspired didn’t make much money from the initial social media experiment (it did see an upsurge in bike part sales) the feedback Cleaver was getting from bike fans all over the world gave him the confidence to fast track the development of a new hybrid street-trial/mountain bike that he’d been planning. In December Inspired launched its first two high-end models retailing at £1100 and £1500 respectively. So far the two-man Inspired has sold 70 of these niche bikes and is working feverishly to introduce a new product line for 2011.

Today, Danny MacAskill is still riding for Inspired and the company is more committed than ever to telling its story through social media especially the videos that so resonate with its new,broader target market. Not that Cleaver is anticipating another YouTube hit on the scale of Danny’s first video. “If we’d tried to plan that it wouldn’t have worked. The best ones always are unplanned,” he says. But inspired, nonetheless.

Well, it only took 48 hours before the Blendtec guys put the new iPad through its paces, so to speak.

Blendtec created a YouTube marketing phenom with its “Will It Blend” series of improbable, um, mashups.

Now, with impeccable timing, comes its iPad test. Enjoy.

Another week and another Facebook brand crisis. This time the brand that’s been hijacked is Tourism Australia and making matters worse, it’s been duped by arch rival Tourism New Zealand, according to Australian trade publication B&T.

Yesterday (April 1 down under) Tourism Australia launched a $150 (AUS) million advertising campaign called “There’s Nothing Like Australia” in which it aimed to tap into that whole user-generated content thing by inviting people to visit a dedicated microsite and “upload a photo of your most unique and memorable Aussie holiday experience.”

All very social I think you’ll agree, (even overlooking the fact that nearly every tourism authority does this type of campaign and no-one can upload anything until April 15). But Tourism Australia appeared to forget the first rule of social media marketing – you have to be where your social media community is rather than expect them to come to you. That left cheeky Tourism New Zealand to jump into the social void and establish a Twitter account titled “NothinglikeAus“, a similarly named Flickr account and a Facebook page called “Nothing like Australia… Welcome to New Zealand” which featured this message: “love from your friendly neighbours, New Zealand.”

Not to be outdone some other individual quickly set up a parody blog called Nothing Like Australia.net featuring spoof Tourism Australia ads, including one of the late Steve Irwin tangling with a crocodile while holding his baby accompanied by this tagline: “There’s nothing like taking your child to work.”

Within hours New Zealand’s prank was over. The Facebook page was removed, the Flickr accounts sits dormant while the Twitter account points back to Tourism Australia. On its own site Tourism New Zealand wrote: ‘‘So, April 1st is almost over… Thanks to Tourism Australia for having an great sense of humour. We’re looking forward to handing over this page to them real soon. Cheers to everyone for sharing the fun. ~ Love NZ,’’ the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The independent parody blog remains however.

Ultimately all this publicity may well be good for Tourism Australia but for the moment the war of the word of mouth seems to have been won by the Kiwis. As one Tweeter posted: “LOL-I’m actually enticed to visit New Zealand after their latest stunt.”