Does anyone remember Successories? Those motivational posters featuring a black background and a beautiful nature photograph with an inspirational saying at the bottom? Perhaps there was one hanging in your orthodontist’s office. Nobody realized it at the time, but those posters were an important precursor to one of the most loved – and most hated – phenomena on the internet: the inspirational quote.
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Working in the digital realm has taught me that social media pages and accounts are the perfect platforms to have my voice heard. Over the years I’ve definitely come to appreciate social media coordinators and those who deal with customer service via Twitter and Facebook. In fact, I think it’s made me better understand how to draft up an effective Tweet before I hit send. But that doesn’t mean I hold my punches – there’s a difference between showing mercy and being a pushover!
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An article came out in Digiday (also, Ad Week if you’re fancy) about Lord+Taylor’s hugely successful Instagram influencer blitz last week. The retailer recruited over 50 influencers to post pictures of them all wearing the same dress with their own unique twist on the style. The campaign must have struck a chord, as the dress is quickly selling out online and in-store.
Listen brands, sit down, because we need to have a serious conversation. Lately we’ve been noticing some odd behaviour, and we want to let you know that we’re here for you. Continue Reading →
Every day there’s a new article about how to market to millennials, or baby boomers, or new moms – some target audience that marketers think they can dissect, peeling away the layers of the proverbial onion to get to the core of what makes people take out their wallets. Every day also brings a new crop of articles about how those other articles got it wrong. Continue Reading →
Warning: this blog post is a rant. If you’re having a great day and see the world through rose-coloured glasses, please DO not read. If you’re like me and cynical as they come, then proceed.
Last year when I was hanging out with my teenaged family members, I remember one of them saying “ Do it for the Vine! ” When I asked them about it, they proceeded to tell me how people do crazy, sometimes stupid stuff, just so they can get a 6-second Vine out of it, with hopes of it going viral.
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As a Canadian first and an advertiser second, I find no greater joy than to sneer at American ads. The bounty of eagles, star spangled banners, and declarations of freedom – from sales tax, that is – get me every time. As a kid, daytime TBS was my favourite source of these. The quasi-patriotic car insurance ads (call 1-800-General now!) and cowboys hawking community college were a strange source of Canadian pride for me. I felt smug that we’re too smart to have that kind of thing happen here.
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.
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.
I have a love-hate relationship with Instagram. Of course I love going through the hundreds of thousands of pictures of celebrities, shoes, cupcakes and hedgehogs, but I also hate it because people seem to have way cooler experiences and better clothes than me.
I also don’t get how I never get more than 100 likes on any given picture. I have almost 1,000 followers on Instagram so shouldn’t at least half those people like my pictures? Why follow me if you’re not going to like my picture of me jumping in a pile of leaves wearing the cutest cardigan, drinking a Pumpkin Spice Latte (I may or may not be basic, don’t judge me).
It makes zero sense. I get that 1/10th of those people probably downloaded the app, followed everyone on their contact list and then forgot about it. But 900 of my followers use Instagram regularly and are seeing my pictures, right? And that goes for anyone really – some girls have thousands of followers but only get a few hundred likes. Continue Reading →