Kaizo once again headed to the London Twestival, held this season at Cable Bar on Bermondsey St. Now a regular event on the London tech scene, the venue was packed to the brim with people drinking Magners cider (at pre-budget prices), tucking into delicious burritos and singing very loudly and out of tune into a karaoke mic. With suggested donations for each ‘activity’, the event raised a total of £12,000, not bad considering it was organised entirely through volunteers and promoted almost exclusively on Twitter!

We think the highlight of the evening was most definitely @sarahmayer and @emsiebelle’s rendition of Blondie’s ‘One Way Or Another’. Warning: Content may cause offence to those individuals with a weak disposition. Please ensure you have earplugs at the ready before clicking through.

Many people have reacted with dismay to the closure of 6Music, including celebrities such as Phil Jupitus who has described the potential axing of 6 Music as “an act of cultural vandalism”.

Apparently one of the reasons for the closure (spokesperson on the radio) is that 6Music never attracted a big enough user base. Digital radios though still seem to be fairly few and far between. We don’t have one in the Kaizo office, relying on the good old internet to get our daily fix.

A weekly audience of 620,000 listeners may not match the heady heights of The Today Programme or Chris Moyles, but the BBC seems to be missing the point. The beauty of a digital station is that you can cater for a specific audience. We’ve already witnessed the speed in which the iPlayer has taken off and in the next couple of years the way in which we access digital content will evolve again. Before the BBC knows it, those 620,000 weekly listeners could have doubled due to the station becoming more accessible to a wider audience via mobile devices or set top boxes. And in any case, if the BBC can churn out turgid shows like ‘Cash in the Attic’, I expect my tastes to be catered for as well!

In recent years, the BBC has come under increasing fire to justify its license fee against commercial organisations. I for one have always defended it due to the leadership the BBC has demonstrated in cultural and media innovation. Today, that argument is all that much harder to defend. There are dozens of radio stations out there with chart driven play lists. 6Music provides a strong alternative that has personality. Will we see an improvement in Radio1 away from all of the chart music, with wider appeal that integrates new and alternative music? Unfortunately I fear not. I also don’t believe Radio2 will be able to diversify its range of music and ‘audience’ to fill the big, 6Music-shaped hole that will be left.

The hashtag #save6Music is currently the top trending topic on Twitter and 6Music has been the subject of an online campaign to save it, with the Facebook group attracting over 84,000 supporters. For the moment, this seems to have all been in vain. The one ray of light is that the station will remain open until the end of 2011 and the decision still needs to be upheld by the BBC Trust. Labour MP Tom Watson has also taken up the fight, tabling a motion in the House of Commons for “the Government to encourage the BBC to continue its support for the station for many years to come.”

So the fight isn’t over just yet. Save our 6Music!

(image source: http://www.bustedtees.com/keepthedreamalive)

Ten to fifteen years ago, other than the occasional interruption of radio and possibly TV news, many crises worked across a timeframe of a day or a couple of days. This is a luxury that no longer exists due to the complexity and immediacy of today’s media and, of course, social media.

There are now news cycles within news cycles, media within media, and enthusiastic amateurs that can spread a story faster than Tiger Woods can make an apology!

So how can brands plan to adapt to the ‘Micro news cycle’ so that its own activity does not amplify that which can be controlled or ignore that which will be shared?

There are a few simple rules to apply here:

Know the influence of the audience
Part of the issue some have is that they can’t make the same association in terms of credibility with, for instance, a tweet as they can with an article in a national Newspaper, so a social media audit should be the first step in any crisis planning activity. Brands need to know the authority of their potential promoters and detractors, and what really constitutes influence.

Don’t wait until the crisis to communicate
Apply the same principles of developing relationships with influential social media contributors as you would with the traditional media. Engage, communicate, involve, and if possible meet.

Put processes and protocols in place
Using the knowledge developed through a media and social media audit, ensure that crisis plans developed take into account some basic metrics that relate to social media, so that the team can distinguish between a crisis and basic background noise.

Adapt and take advice
The hard and fast rules are that there are no hard and fast rules, just a changing landscape that requires the brand to be flexible, open, communicative and relevant. In the heat of a social media frenzy, one bad move can spread like wildfire so testing responses internally and with advisers is essential.

Remember one tweet won’t build a brand but it might bring one down…

Contact rhodri.harries@kaizo.net for further information.

Twestival is a great example of how social media can be utilised to create online word-of-mouth that has a direct impact offline; in this case on the number of attendees. Promoted almost exclusively via Twitter, people are kept up-to-date via the @LDNTwestival Twitter stream. This leads to retweets from the event’s 3,700+ followers and helps to spread awareness of the event online. There’s also a Facebook group and the event has received widespread coverage on blogs and in forums.

There’s a great deal of value to be had from attending the event. Not only do you get to support a charity in a more interesting way than simply giving a donation, Twestival is a great opportunity to meet with a community of technology and social media early adopters and other influential people.

Kaizo was right in the heart of the action, enjoying the variety of entertainment and tweeting into the early hours!