Jason Giles | 88creative.ca/blog

BOLD social predictions for 2015

I can sit here all day and write about trend forecasting and Instagram surpassing Twitter in terms of active users and wait, that actually happened? Well anyway I want to do something different. I want my social predictions to be the hottest of takes that the internet has ever seen for 2015, so here we go.

Everyone will hashtag their first name in Tweets, turning Twitter into HARD TWITTER. Once it gets too easy to compile your thoughts into 140 characters, Twitter users will be looking for a challenge. Add your name as a hashtag and BOOM! Just like that you’re dealing with 134 characters. Or, start referring to yourself in the third person. I promise, you’ll be a trend-setter in no time.

Instagram, tiring of consistent visual content, will start exploring font treatments and adding fonts to our perfectly- filtered photos. Do you know what’s kind of getting old. Pictures of food. And realistically, who even reads the captions. What we want is CONTENT ABOVE THE FOLD.

Someone creates Smellstagram and the results will be exactly what you think they would be. #farts

BIG DATA becomes HUMONGOUS DATA As people want to go more macro to gain insights about the wider society that their customers live in. I have no idea what this means. Just call a sociologist at this point.

The US Government will impose sanctions on BuzzFeed for making quizzes. JUST STOP ALREADY I KNOW HOW BASIC AND 90’S I AM.

SnapChat will finally get real and accept advertising money from the likes of Durex and Trojan because lets call a spade a spade – It’s a sexting app.

That one’s free, advertisers. Feel free to run with that idea.

Vine will become overloaded with “Bruh” vines and “My name is Jeff” that it will become all but obsolete in 2015

Someone will create a “Facebook, but for like marketers and advertisers” that is pay to play. It will be hugely successful as brands compete for advertising professionals, journalists, bloggers and other brands’ attentions for collaboration and synergistic opportunities. Think of it as a mix of Dragon’s Den and Real Housewives of New Jersey. It’s basically the antithesis to Ello and probably slightly less douchey.

Facebook will be overrun with grandparents.

Think about it, the demographic with the biggest growth on Facebook is easily 40+. Now that all of the cool teens are staying away from Facebook, it’s only a foregone conclusion that our parents will all overpower us with Candy Crush requests, retirement vacation property pictures, not-so-subtle reminders that you’re almost 30 and not married yet and posts that have tagged grandmaster flash in them.

Ello will experience a huge user base influx and rival Facebook.

Just kidding, this one is a joke.

My Life As a Conversion

unicorn

As marketers, we’ve all done it. We’ve thrown the “social conversion” idea out there to our clients. OOOH sparkly. What is a social conversion? It’s the purest form of the social sales funnel – someone likes a promoted page, interacts with their content, and makes a purchase decision either in-store or through an e-commerce site.

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How a BuzzFeed quiz landed us on the front page of the Toronto Star

QUIZ-01 (1)

Over Thanksgiving weekend, my ever diligent co-worker Danielle spotted an email from Buzzfeed that stated they were opening up the ability to create quizzes as a community post. Previously a sponsored quiz on Buzzfeed would run you about $20,000. Yikes. CONTINUE READING

We’re participating in Startup Open House Toronto!

open house-04

So as it turns out, both us and our office mates at BuzzBuzzHome happen to be startups. Which is perfect because we just signed up to host an open house as part of Startup Open House Toronto 2014. CONTINUE READING

Content Creation and Filmmaking – Not the Same But Kind Of

Director chair-02 Christopher Nolan wrote an op-ed in the New York Times last week lamenting the state of modern filmmaking in Hollywood. In making his point, he lumped in filmmaking and the business of major motion pictures under the rather general content creation umbrella.

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Lenovo needs some help with social media crisis management

88-bloggraphics3-03 (1) We live in an age where any schlub with a Twitter account can start a “social apocalypse” for brands.

Despite knowing better, I am one of those schlubs.

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Instagram Explore: Curated Content Done Right

Instagram explore

I’ve been using Instagram for the better part of two and a half years, and the only time I go to the Explore page is when I want to search and add someone (read: creep). I have never once cared about the litany of posts with thousands of likes that are on it.

Well, until now that is.

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Turn Off Your Filters

brainstorm

I have a bit of a reputation around the office for just blurting out ideas. Sometimes with a ton of thought involved, but mostly things just off the top of my head and hoo boy, are some of them ever dumb. But here’s something I’ve learned in my time in this industry, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but there’s no such thing as a dumb idea. CONTINUE READING