Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Nov 2, 2018)

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

Instagram Adds “I Voted” Sticker

Summary: Instagram will roll out “I voted” stickers up to two days before the election and on Stories the day of the election on Nov 6. If three or more of your friends use the stickers, then Instagram will create a "We Voted" Story, which will appear at the top of your feed, showing you the posts from everyone who has voted.

Opinion: Vote. Seriously, it’s a right that should be taken with great responsibility. There are people who fight (and die) for this right in other countries.

Twitter Puts #BeAVoter Front and Center

Summary: Twitter is going to remind you to vote via reminders at the top of your timeline with info about the candidates, issues on the ballot, and where their polling place is.

Opinion: Vote. It’s your civic duty.

I’m leaving it with this in this week’s edition because of the critical importance of exercising our right to vote. Your voice matters, your opinion matters, who represents you matters. Read about the candidates and issues and see how they will affect you. Do it over beer/wine with friends, at the beach, inside by a fire, make it fun. And, most importantly VOTE!

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Oct 26, 2018)

Trend of more from less? Twitter and Snapchat both report decline in monthly users but an increase in revenue. LinkedIn finds a way for more people to see content from the non-1%.

Twitter Q3 Revenues Up

Summary: Twitter reported an increase of 29% in revenue year-over-year, including the same increase in advertising revenue as well. They’ve done a better job of removing spam-like accounts at sign up and are introducing efforts to make it easier to follow events, topics, and interests. However, monthly active users have dropped.

Opinion: Although a bit of a ways off, Twitter could go the way of the telephone with this trend—a few people will hang on to it that you can charge more, but the overall numbers are down.

Snap Q3, Revenue Up but MAUs Down

Summary: Snap was in a similar situation to Twitter, up $14.34M above earning expectations, but down nearly 1 million monthly active users. The stock took a beating on this news

Opinion: So what’s the difference between Twitter and Snap? My theory is that Twitter has been (arguably) improving on a situation whereas Snap is facing decline in users without much on the horizon indicating there will be a turnaround.

LinkedIn Algorithm Change

Summary: LinkedIn recently made changes to its algorithm allowing more posts to be seen by the non-1% . Prior to the change, most posts that were seen were produced from the top 1% of content creators, discouraging others from posting because posts wouldn’t be seen. With the new changes, 8% of the feedback is being redistributed from the top .01% creators.

Opinion: Now maybe people will start seeing my LinkedIn posts to this blog!

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Oct 12, 2018)

How Pantene can help fix your #BadHairDay and more in this week’s Marketing in the Digital Age.

Having #ABadHairDay? Pantene Can Help

Summary: Pantene's "14-Day Challenge" invites Instagram and Twitter users to post pictures with the #BadHairDay hashtag to receive a personalized consultation from a Pantene Hair Advisor. The haircare brand has enlisted an "army" of social responders in a new #GreatHairDay Studio to engage with each #BadHairDay post.​ They encourage people to post videos on social media with to be used as ads from “real people” using the product. The brand saw 17x more photos with #BadHairDay than with #GreatHairDay.

Opinion: I am sure the stylists are in need of well-deserved time off after answering that many posts/tweets! The engagement is interesting in that people wanted to share more of the “embarrassing” photos to get advice. Makes sense since there isn’t much interaction needed on a great hair day.

Snap Originals in AR

Summary: Snap will be releasing a dozen new shows catered for their format. It will be leveraging storytelling through an AR focus to make the viewing more interactive. The video will be filmed in a 360-degree format so that the viewer can walk through the scene as if you’re inside of it.

Opinion: Still struggling after the controversial redesign, it begs the question: why doesn’t Snapchat go back to its old format? These videos could be a good addition but still don’t address the fundamental, mass attrition issue.

Facebook Interactions Influence Instagram Feed

Summary: If you like or comment friend’s posts on Facebook, you will be more likely to see this friend’s content on your Instagram feed. Because your Instagram feed is no longer ranked chronologically, a majority of content from friends and family were being missed. Facebook uses machine learning to prioritize what content may be most relevant for you.

Opinion: They are the same company. It’s not rocket science to put one-and-one together to see that they would cross-use data. Especially with the amount of data breaches Facebook has seen, we know they use a lot of data to market.

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Oct 5, 2018)

Selfie deaths on the rise, A.I. written ads, and the QR code resurrection in this week’s Marketing in the Digital Age.

Death By Selfie

Summary: A study from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences found over 250 people have died in the past five years while trying to take a selfie. The country with the most selfie deaths was India followed by Russia, US, and Pakistan.

Opinion: Well, I guess we all have to go sometime.

Burger King’s “A.I. Written” Ads

Summary: Burger King released a series of ads that started with the bleeping sound of a modem and a warning that the ad was created by artificial intelligence. It produced ads around a chicken sandwich like “It tastes like bird.” Lo and behold, the ads were actually created by humans posing as A.I. as a nod to the threat people fear of A.I.

Opinion: Any ad that gets me to write about it I take as good as marketing!

Instagram Introduces Scannable Nametags

Summary: As the title of the article implies, Instagram rolled out scannable, semi-customizable QR name tags for users across the platform. Even though QR codes aren’t huge in the US, they have generated $1.65 TRILLION from transactions in China and Japan, and the hope is it translates over to the US over the coming years.

Opinion: Even with slow adoption of it in the US, scannable QR codes have provide their worth in spades with our friends in the East. Makes sense to incorporate it as international growth for these companies become increasingly important.

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Sept 28, 2018)

How many new ways can we get advertised to now? Let me count the ways…

Facebook Shadow Profiles

Summary: Even if you changed your ad settings not to target on Facebook, Facebook has still found a way to target ads to you with near psychic like prediction. By using information you handed over for security purposes, like a cell for two-step verification, or even info you didn’t hand over at all, like your contact number stored in your friend’s contact list that s/he connected to Facebook, these “shadow profiles” are being used to target ads to you. This practice wasn’t limited to Facebook but also extended to Pinterest, Google, and Twitter.

Opinion: I would have that Facebook would get a jump ahead on rectifying this situation with the amount of security breaches and scrutiny it has been under the past few months. I guess not. In addition, it seems none of the other culprits are learning from what Facebook has endured either and are doomed to repeat the same mistake. These actions seem all too familiar when it comes to seeing businesses thinking they are too big to fail (i.e. banks, entertainment industry).

Snapchat’s New Monetization Strategies

Summary: Snapchat announced Collections, which will allow brands to provide links to purchase their products without having to swipe up on the ad. Collections will appear between users’ Stories and in the Discover section. In addition, Snap also announced it will allow users to purchase products on Amazon by pointing the Snapchat camera at an object around them.

Opinion: These seem like great tools to bring more concrete engagement metrics to brands that advertise on Snapchat. One thing to note, with Instagram announcing a similar purchase link a week and a half ago, it’s suspect how independently these companies actually run.

Facebook Goes After YouTube Advertising

Summary: Facebook announced In-Stream Reserve which will allow advertisers to reach people watching video from a selection of the most watched videos. Advertisers can select specific categories to advertise within, like beauty, sports, etc. YouTube has a similar option called Google Preferred. Facebook also announced ThruPlay, which allows advertisers to pay for ads that are viewed through completion or at least 15 seconds only (akin to TrueView with YouTube).

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Aug 31, 2018)

Can political manipulation be stopped? Probably not, but it can be curbed hopefully. 

Twitter Launches "Issue Ads" 

Summary: Twitter announced it will launch issue ads, which will label ads in for stream as political ads.  This is being done in an effort to curtail manipulation by politically motivated groups. If they are paid for by political candidates, they will hold an additional label "paid for by" as well.  Advertisers seeking to run ads in these categories will need to go through a certification process to verify their identity and info, though news organizations will have an exemption to this.  

Opinion: It's apparent some type of transparency is required within this sector. Interestingly, the exemption for news organizations could be a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it allows news to flow freely; on the other hand, what constitutes a "news organization"?  Does an extremist group reporting on news in that arena classify as an organization? 

WhatsApp Monetization

Summary: WhatsApp announced its first revenue generating product, the WhatsApp Business API.  This tool will allow businesses to respond to messages for free for 24-hours and then charges for replies after that. The company has opened the service up to a select group of businesses as a test, which seem to be larger companies like Uber, Wish, etc. 

Opinion: This news surfaced a few months ago and will be a great test to monetize a platform in an "organic" sense.  By organic, I mean a way that helps customers and businesses by providing a customer service platform while also helping a business monetize its product.  

YouTube Fundraising Tool for Nonprofits

Summary: As released by YouTube: “Fundraisers enable fans to donate to creator-led campaigns directly on YouTube via a “Donate” button, making it easier than ever for creators and fans to raise funds for causes they care about on the platform. Creators can simply set up their campaigns, and let us take care of the logistics and payment processing.”

YouTube also rolled owed Community Fundraisers, which enables multiple creators to co-host the same event.  

Opinion: For non-profits, awareness, funds, and marketing expertise aren't always readily available.  This new function can help non-profits raise awareness for their causes. Allowing for Community Fundraisers is akin to crossposting on Facebook, which has been successfully used by brands to promote the same event. 

Marketing in the Digital Age: Weekly News Round-Up (week ending Aug 24, 2018)

Diversity in marketing in the this week's Marketing in the Digital Age. 

Beauty Vlogger "Apology"

Summary: A 2012 racist tweet from YouTube beauty vlogger Laura Lee resurfaced in which she tweeted, "tip for all black people if you pull ur pants up you can run from the police faster."  When fans from a rival beauty vlogger dug up the tweet, Lee deleted her Twitter account and issued a Notes app apology.  A few days later she resurfaced with what is now a formulaic apology from YouTube bloggers- cry, apologize, cry some more, beg forgiveness.  Instead, she ended up with a wholly insincere video which went viral for all the wrong reasons-- mocking her "apology".

Opinion: I couldn't even get through this "apology" video.  We all make mistakes. Unfortunately for those thrust into the public eye and with the advent of social media, it's hard to escape the past and these mistakes.  Releasing a video for the sake of releasing a video here does more damage than reparations in this case.  

Nike Promoting Gang Culture

Summary: Nike was criticized for profiting from "gang culture" in a recent ad with a model wearing a balaclava with a holster.  The balaclava was created in partnership with Alyx.  Nike released a statement saying, "These products were part of a wider Nike Training collection, styled on different models and available in multiple markets around the world. We are in no way condoning or encouraging the serious issue of criminal and gang culture.”  The product has been removed from the website, which incidentally featured a while male model without a holster.  

Opinion: Gang culture or not, an image of a balaclava paired with holsters is not an innocuous ad.  Moreover, featuring a black male model with a holster and a white male model without one begs the question if there is a lack of diversity and diversity training at Nike.  With a few other brands making big mistakes on the issues of diversity, this stands out as seemingly even more ignorant.

Facebook Hires HP's Luccio as CMO

Summary: Antonio Luccio was announced as the new incoming CMO at Facebook.  During his tenure at HP, Luccio was known for championing his efforts in diversity.  “Purpose and impact have been at the center of every career decision that I have ever made,” said Lucio, adding that he will work to “support [Facebook’s] evolution. “Facebook is one of the world’s most impactful brands, at a pivotal moment in its history.” Prior to this, Lucio served as CMO at Pepsi.  

Opinion: At this critical juncture in Facebook's history and the often lack of diversity in marketing, it's nice to see a seasoned veteran who is known for championing diversity and works with the intent of purpose and impact.  

Marketing in the Digital Age: New Round-Up (week ending Aug 10, 2018)

Controlling Google's algorithm, Instagram's makeup trend, and Facebook large page verifications in this week's Marketing in the Digital Age.  

Google's Celebrity Video App, Cameos

Summary: Google is releasing an app for celebrities to search for the most asked questions about them and respond with vertical video.  It's like a Reddit-style AMA (Ask Me Anything) that allows celebrities more control over what people see about them.  These videos will appear at the top of search results, and allow celebrities to weigh in ahead of Google's algorithm feed.  

Opinion: Some celebrities will need a publicist to control this, ahem, Kanye, Trump... 

Instaception: Instagram's Newest Makeup Trend

Summary: Instaception is being used by makeup artists to paint borders on one's face to look like the frame of an Instagram post.  

Option:  Although I couldn't see walking out of the house with a painted still frame on my face personally, props to these artists for a new, literal facial expression.  

Facebook Pages with Large Followings to Require Location Verification

Summary: In an effort to crack down on fake accounts, Facebook will require pages with large followings to verify their physical location.  The definition of "large" accounts was not released, but these accounts will receive a notification in the top of their News Feed.  If an account chooses not to verify the info, they can no longer post.  Facebook managers will also need to verify his/her location.  This action will start this month primarily on accounts with large US followings.

Opinion: It feels like there is still a way to circumvent the verification process if the Facebook account was setup via a VPN or something to the like.  Since this is not my area of expertise, I am sure the security team at Facebook has already addressed this (well, hopefully).