The Canadian social media scene has seen its latest player enter the field as Sharpe Blackmore Euro RSCG has launched Ripple that will be headed up by Janice Diner who was previously Creative Director at Segal Communications. In her new role Janice will take on the role as General Manager and Creative Director for Ripple-Social Influence Marketing where she brings to the table her four plus years of social media experience predominately leveraging Facebook which at an event for the agency yesterday Janice shared that she’s been using Facebook before her kids have.
“Clearly, social media is becoming an important piece in brand development and consumer engagement, “ says President Tom Blackmore. “We have enhanced our capabilities to ensure our clients have the best thinking available. We’re lucky to have Janice on board and part of our team.”
A new site has been created for the agency as well they have created a Facebook page, it will be interesting to see how they differentiate themselves in what is already a crowed marketplace where many of the existing players offer a “meet too” type approach to social media. One thing that is disappointing to see is they aren’t using more of the social media tools, not to say that all agency’s need to blog but there is no better way to know how it fits with a client’s business objectives than to be using them yourself. Just like how a manufacture dedicated a certain percentage to an research and development budget, I think that agencies should also dedicate a certain percentage of the rates they charge to trial and test out social media tools.
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Hey, David.
Thanks for both coming to the Ripple launch event as well as writing about it. I’m still cooling off from the elevated temperature in the room.
You’re right. We don’t currently use a blog. Instead, we chose to initially build up our Facebook Page simply because that’s where most of our clients’ interests lie and it just seemed to be the best way to start the conversation. We intend to use our own Facebook presence to test new applications, gather data, and other fun stuff that you’ll see.
But only if you become a fan ; )
I guess you could say that you can find our blog in the form of our participation in Facebook notes, and the discussion board. We also launched a podcast called “ThinkCast”. In our first interview, Ron Tite (The event MC and SB Creative Director) interviews Dan Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind”.
I totally hear you on the differentiation front, too. We’re not the first agency to launch a division but I think the differentiation will come in the work we produce that has been developed with experience.
You can check out our social media press release http://www.RipleSocialMedia.com
And our Facebook Page
Janice Diner
General Manager, Creative Director
Ripple – Social Influence Marketing
Sharpe Blackmore Euro RSCG
http://www.RippleSocialMedia.com