I concluded the last of my Christmas shopping today, part of which involved visiting my local Body Shop. What an experience! For the females I had to buy for, I simply told the kind girl behind the counter how old they were, what they did and what my budget was for each of them. Ten minutes later I left with suitable presents, price tags removed and everything wrapped. I wonder if there's a market for something similar but with guys?...

I've received a fair bit of flack over my post about the Pimp My Kettle campaign. Apparently I wasn't constructive enough, which admittedly is true but by saying campaigns like this are ruining my career was apparently going too far. Well here is some justification on what a successful social media campaign should look like. Check out Julian's post on The Body Shop. So not only have they established a blog that actually works quite well, they are slowly looking to build up an authentic community. The best part of this, was that after Julian posted that, the author behind the blog commented. Simply using Google alerts this author has created a relationship that has since grown. But it goes one step further. If you were to check out Julian's post on the Pimp My Kettle campaign there is again a comment from The Body Shop. It was actually rather insightful, fits well with the brand and most importantly wouldn't have shown up in Google Alerts. This means that the author is regularly checking out Julian's blog, continuing to build this relationship. And that's how social media campaigns should work. Building relationships by providing value. Not creating false communities around passions that don't exist that will die in three months anyway. So while this is all new and we are still learning our way around, some rules and guidelines have already been set. Ignoring them does hurt my career and gives me every right to bag your shitty campaign if it deserves it....