BBC brings classical music to the people via singing posters

“The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra has launched an outdoor campaign using posters that play music to commuters as they pass by.

The ‘Sonic’ sites from CBS Outdoor contain music chips that play classical music to promote the 2009/2010 Season. The creative encourages consumers to purchase season tickets for Scotland’s prestigious Orchestra”

What a brilliant idea. After working on a BBC Classical music brief recently, our insight was that people like Classical music far more than they might immediately think, so the challenge is to get people listening to it again and reminding them of the breadth of appeal. So these posters are brilliant to go along with the site we are producing, as they do exactly what the insight suggests – take the music to the people, rather than requiring action from them and then providing an immediate call to action, whilst the consumer is in a purchase mindset. I wonder if this includes mobile ticket purchase?

Wonder how many music labels. promoters and music branding agencies are going to be using these?

Would love to see some video of this. Please let me know if you find some.

Twitter as a social PR tool

I won’t apologise about my theme of blogging about twitter.  As a fast growing communications medium, it’s fascinating.  Also as a relatively new user I’m just getting to understand the benefits and I want to share them.

I’ve just spotted a great use of twitter as a PR tool (and a great way to build your network of followers).  The BBC are opening up Erik Huggers – Editor of Digital – to an audience of twitter followers, for a Q & A session.  A real conversation with your consumers I hear you say?  Good work BBC I say.

Perhaps not the most exciting senario for twitterers but how far could this be extended?  Music brands opening up their celebs to a real time conversation?  Or Honda engineers talking in realtime in a Q&A session for fans?

It’s not genius but well done BBC for embracing social media.

Help me want to use you more

I just read that the BBC are now offering online recipe videos and something struck me: there is a lot (LOT) of educational content online, but what is missing?

In my opinion, structure.  Like a good old fashioned syllabus.  Not everyone wants to just dip in and out.  Some people would like to do a cost effective alternative to a basic cookery course or french cookery course. They would also have more of a sense of achievement, potentially longer term engagement with the site and ability to set goals.

Of course you would need to allow users who want to dip in and out do that, but others like a bit of structure and sense of purpose.

So when are we going to see the online cookery school from the BBC or others, or a way of tailoring your own syllabus (basically a list of favourites and a tick off list)?  And how many other examples of this lack of structure are there…..youtube content, language learning content, podcasts….?