In the first of an ongoing new media/marketing video series called IN THE KNOW and brought to you B&T and film production company In The Thicket, who better to kick off with than none other than Hewlett-Packard’s marketing director Darren Needham-Walker.

In our first instalment of IN THE KNOW Needham-Walker talks about the all-important issue of consumers in the age of social media. Check out the video in full here.

Needham-Walker says the masters of social media – the Ys – are often working across a host of devices at any one time and are “interacting with them up to 35 times an hour”.

He adds: “From consumer marketing through to enterprise marketing (Hewlett-Packard) spends a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of budget on getting the consumer market message right.

“We need to ensure the messaging we’re putting into market will deliver the cut through and will solicit a response.

“The social media phenomena is really interesting and one of the things we focus on. Rather than growing our fan base, just acquiring new fans, is ensuring that we are driving a high level of engagement with those who choose to partner with our brand’s social pages plus Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

“(It’s) engagement over fan size. I rate someone who puts a comment or too share much more than someone who purely ‘likes’; but all of them are good,” Needham-Walker said.

And be sure to checkout more of B&T’s/In The Thicket’s IN THE KNOW media video series over the coming weeks.