Instagram Adds Tagging, Grassroots Catalogs Anyone?

Instagram has brought tagging to their platform. The question that interests me is not how brands will utilize this feature with their official instagram accounts, but how will individual instagram users tag brand accounts?

This goes back to an earlier post where I declared everyone can be a brand advocate similar to how instagram made everyone an artist.

Brands can encourage users to use this tagging feature to tag their products being used in every day life. A brand should set out to make a grassroots catalog entirely designed by people using and tagging their products.

A component of digital marketing campaigns must consider the content that can be created outside corporate headquarters and utilize the greater community of brand advocates equipped with their phones. There is a trained army of brand supporters out there, you just have to give them the incentive and nudge them to action.



Digital Video Advertising

Watch out television, there is a giant around the corner and it’s coming after your dollars.

The digital video advertisement industry is blowing up and as this AdWeek article points out, digital video advertising has the advantage of interactivity without the time constraints that television has.

The most successful commercial in 2012 was a 30 minute video for a non-profit against the African dictator Joseph Kony on YouTube. The video looked more like a documentary with a call-to-action than a commercial. But, the beautiful thing about the Kony video was that 97,384,310 watched it because they wanted to. The commercial became a piece of entertainment, something of interest that people gravitated to.

We are at the cusp of a creative revolution where marketers have to break from their previous confinements and it won’t be easy for them. The old thinking about television commercials was a slave to time articulating their message to couch potatos with a clicker.

The new thinking about digital video advertising can be less restrained by time and more focused on entertaining the viewer with a trackpad to actually do something. That’s powerful.

Instead of running television ads on the web, brands should be taking advantage of these enormous differences to maximize their digital video marketing campaigns.

Digital video advertising is making an impact. The below chart is from another AdWeek article:

Pict: Digital Marketing Through Photos

Pict allows brands to be tagged in photos. Similar to Facebook tagging individuals, brands can be tagged in photos then used in Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, & Instagram then integrate with a selling/purchasing service like Etsy, Shopify, Magento and more.

Pict enables analytics to show the amount of sales made through each social network.

Visual media + Linkable content + Analytics = powerful.

People that would normally never put time and effort into setting up a photo shoot for brands/products will begin doing just that. Amateur photographers will further propel their brand.

Pict is currently in private beta and is inviting requests.

Instagram unlocked the creative photographer that millions did not know they had in them. It will be interesting to see how Pict transforms the inner marketer with creative, exquisite digital marketing content.

Bring More Than Filters To A Photo Fight

In the age where everyone is an artist, thanks to Instagram, Pictorious is now trying to make everyone a marketer.

Pictorious is a photo sharing app like instagram, but with a twist of photo challenges. You can invite your friends to photo challenges on any subject and earn rewards/points.

Popchips has partnered with Pictorious to generate marketing photos for the company asking users, “what creative artwork can you make out of your popchips?” The winner gets a 3 month supply of popchips.

This is a good example of a company using gamification to decentralize the production of content for their digital marketing. The old motto of “many hands makes light work” is extremely valuable with your digital marketing campaign.

Instead of being stuck in rut wondering how you can get more done, produce more, launch more, make more…. think how you can leverage the greater community that is already out there equipped (and trained) with iPhones.

To recruit digital troops, Popchips didn’t have to spend months coding a new platform working with designers and developers. Popchips is leverage an existing platform to reach an audience that is already built to propel their brand.

That’s some good digital marketing.

General Motors Returns To Facebook

About a year ago GM created a stir announcing that it was withdrawing their Facebook ads.

“Today, Chevrolet is launching an industry-first, ‘mobile-only’ pilot campaign for the Chevrolet Sonic that utilizes newly available targeting and measurement capabilities on Facebook.”

In 2011, GM spent approximately $10 Million in Facebook ads. Making a retreat from Facebook after spending this amount of money tells you something, they had a lot of data to review and chose to bounce.

But they’re back!

Maybe GM loves the retargeting Facebook ads, or maybe they realize that their previous $10 Million is a drop in the bucket of their $3.1 Billion budget.

It’s smart for GM to keep experimenting because the Facebook of 2011 is not the same one of 2013.

Facebook is data hungry. Traditionally, Facebook has relied on the data that it has acquired itself within the walls of Facebook. Now, Facebook is acquiring additional data outside of Facebook by teaming up with Datalogix, Epsilon and Acxiom. Facebook is building up its location and online purchasing and browsing histories data to deliver more relevant, tailored ads to you.

GM’s retreat from Facebook ads was a major PR wound for Facebook and it’s evident they got the message.

Your digital marketing campaign should be aware of this new data coming from beyond the walls of Facebook. Adding location history data with your browsing history can really sharpen your digital marketing to send local ads that are meaningful to your audience.

To The Streets

Two interesting concepts involve art, data, music, and the raw streets. There is something interesting with integrating the everyday street with something more under the cold surface.

Rap Quotes is a project to put up street signs incorporating rap lyrics that mention the location of where the street sign is posted.




The second concept is a public, offline, peer to peer file sharing network in public. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anyone. A person would plug their laptop to a wall and share your files/data. There is a global map detailing the dead drop locations.



Both of these offline projects would not exist without online exposure. The internet gives these concepts the juice to flourish and spread. What I love about these concepts is that they are extremely simple without any monetary incentive to execute; they are done for the sake of exploring, to see what happens and to try something new.

Refreshing.

ElectNext – emergence of data and politics

ElectNext has raised $1.3 Million to provide easily embeddable widgets for publications to use showing data content pertaining to politics.

From a interview with TechCrunch, ElectNext is on a mission to “harness the power of big data to empower citizens with relevant information on our politicians delivered in the precise moment we most need it.”

What type of data?

Campaign Finance Records
Legislation
Roll Call Votes
Press Releases
Debates/Public Speeches

During the last election, ElectNext offered a quiz which allowed you to answer questions and then it would match the best Presidential candidate to your answers. It allowed you to prioritize the issues that you care most about to help match the candidate with you.

ElectNext is another example of the emergence of data and politics and it’s taking on the enormous challenge of taking lots of complex data and distilling it into something simple.

The Oreo Political Campaign

During the Super Bowl power outage I was impressed with Oreo’s rapid response to promote their brand of cream filled cookies.

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This rapid response reminded me of the war rooms that campaigns are known for. A campaign has a finite amount of time whereas corporations don’t think this way. A campaign has a very hard deadline called Election Day and there will only be one winner. In this environment, time is a very special and precious commodity and it impacts how we operate.

The war room generally consists of the campaign manager, the political director, digital operatives, and possibly a few consultants for the purpose of making decisions and executing on the spot.

The agency driving the Oreo brand during the superbowl was 360i and they said the following about their operation…

“We had a mission control set up at our office with the brand and 360i, and when the blackout happened, the team looked at it as an opportunity,” agency president Sarah Hofstetter told BuzzFeed. “Because the brand team was there, it was easy to get approvals and get it up in minutes.”

Exactly what the political campaign space has been doing for years.

Vine – Is Six Seconds Enough?

Thew new iOS video sharing app from Twitter has people asking if six seconds is enough time to convey a message. Yes, six seconds is enough if everyone else is also confined to this limit, so don’t let this limit prevent you from incorporating it into your digital marketing efforts.

Why does six seconds work? Because you don’t have much attention span with users on their iPhone. Brands should look at Vine as an instagram with an opportunity to share a little more personality and emotion.

Here are three brand that have jumped on the Vine:

CafeMocaVa – making life taste yummy.

PBS NewsHour – showing off some awesome gear.

The Daily Beast – catch a special moment of President and First Lady Obama.

Dogs Trust – add an emotional element and incorporate a call-to-action with your vine.

How can your brand use Vine?

Restaurants – show the plates that come out of the kitchen, make some mouths water!
Bars – show specialty cocktails and event space that you may offer for special occasions.
General Business – six seconds is enough to let the world see a happy customer that is delighted with your service/product.
Professional Service – offer tips or specialities that you offer as an attorney, counselor, therapist, masseuse.
Non-Profit – show the supporters/volunteers behind your work and drive an emotional element with your vine to transform bystanders into active supporters.

Apps For Your Digital Marketing

At Swiftcurrent we are always on the prowl for new apps that can help our clients achieve their goals. Here are a few interesting apps that you might find valuable in your digital marketing/managing efforts:


Roambi Analytics – Roambi converts your Excel data into interactive charts and graphs — and instantly sends them to any iPhone or iPad. Roambi is attempting to give you more insight from the data of your campaign, business, or non-profit.

 

StatNut – An app that allows you to track your stats for twitter, youtube, facebook, vimeo, instagram, and Salem’s own Dribbble. This can be helpful to monitor your activity and be alerted to any sudden spikes in growth. Identifying growth spikes can help you jump on a media wave or an opportunity to further drive your brand.

 

Gather – If you are hosting a conference you may want to check out Gather to quickly communicate with your attendees. This could be a great app for political conferences and conventions, especially if your campaign is trying to win a nomination at a convention and you want to communicate quickly with your campaign supporters about any shenanigans happening on the floor.


Appafolio – Create presentations, portfolios, or brochures from your iPhone or iPad.

 

 

Flint – A credit card scanner for your iPhone but it doesn’t require any scan readers. It brilliantly uses the camera on your iPhone to scan only the credit card numbers on the credit card, it doesn’t save the photo to the iPhone, and allows you to then verify it with the security code on the card by manually entering it. Fees for debit card transactions are 1.95% + $0.20 per charge. Fees for credit cards are 2.95% + $0.20. The customer receipts easily allows the customer to then Facebook their purchase to talk about your business to help create valuable content.