alexhorvitz-blog

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A Few Pointers from My First Week at DIG

On Monday I began my media and marketing internship at Digital Influence Group in Boston. Having been at this full-service digital marketing agency for the past week, not only have I learned a ton about media and marketing, but also I have picked a few light-hearted pointers that might be of use to folks in the future. I have listed some of the most important ones below:

Really think through your answers to the “10 Questions” post that will go up on the DIG blog … and then be aware of what some people might think of you if you say your favorite YouTube video is "Baby Monkey Riding Backwards on a Pig."

The brick sidewalk around the Government Center T stop is NOT ideal for heels … 

…. and it gets VERY, VERY, VERY slippery when it rains. Slipping and falling on your knees with a coffee in one hand and umbrella in the other is almost a guarantee.

Don’t get too embarrassed when you are getting a walk-through with tech support on a PC and can’t find the “Start” button (Hello -- on a MAC you have a simple menu bar!).

Prepare yourself to jump if you are attempting to sit at the high tables for lunch (if you’re short like me, at least).

Don’t drink a soda during a vendor meeting … no matter how thirsty you are. Burping quietly is impossible.

Prepare to learn a new language with terms like PMD, EMV, API, CTR, CPC, CPM, IO, RFP, CPF. 

When walking about the office, be on the lookout for someone turning a corner on a skateboard.

The Cosi downstairs doesn’t give you a paper bag for your lunch until after you pay. So if you choose a “Take 2” meal, and you have no pockets for your phone and wallet, it is highly likely you will drop everything – and I mean everything – on the floor.

Using your old AIM screen name from 6th grade is highly encouraged (to the point where you might feel left out if you can’t remember your password for that account and have to create a new one).

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Like I said in my last post...Facebook does it again! This time, they have hit the social scene with the infamous beer company, Budweiser.

Meet Buddy Cup, the Solo Cup 2.0. As the video above says, the Buddy Cup takes advantage of toasting drinks by sending a friend request to the person you are toasting when you clink cups. For Budweiser this seems like a creative transmedia campaign; however, will it be well received? I think that a product like this does bring Budweiser even closer to its consumers via social media; however, I can't see these cups lasting any period of time. I would be interested to see how they implement the Buddy Cup, because something like one time parties in the country's bigger cities could raise hype about the brand in a beneficial way. However, should Budweiser try to sell these cups to various bars and clubs, I think they would encounter some issues. 

Overall, I praise Budweiser for continuously surprising us with innovate marketing techniques, and I think the Buddy Cup is a great way to reinforce Budweiser's brand. 

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Facebook does it again. They find some other way to completely invade your personal life. In our last class we discussed mobile platforms, and how hitting these platforms is going to be the "big move" of all of the world's strongest companies. Well, I think Facebook might get the prize for making the first "big move." They have recently released "Home," a new software suit, or app, for Android phones that completely takes over your phone and makes your lock screen a continual scroll of your Facebook newsfeed (your "Cover Feed"), removes all your apps from your lock screen, and even centers your lovely profile picture on your screen so that you can swipe it in various directions to access your FB messages, most recently used apps, etc.  

Facebook has completely redesigned a phone's Home screen to be your Facebook newsfeed. Accessing your contacts, Internet browser, etc., is not as simple as clicking the button anymore. Instead you have to use your profile picture icon to swipe around and find your apps. 

What is a little more scary about this new release is the advertising capabilities it provides, as the Times article says:

"What’s missing? Video posts and ads. Both, Facebook says, are coming soon. Yes, you read that right: the latest billboard for advertising is your own cellphone’s home screen. Are you ready for this?"

So, I guess I didn't speak too soon when I mentioned in class the idea of having targeted ads pop up on your home screen, because - guess what - Facebook is ON TOP of that! 

  Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/technology/personaltech/facebooks-grab-for-your-phone-what-gives.html?_r=0

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The other day I was casually watching some videos on YouTube and every now and then one of those (ANNOYING/BORING) ads would prevent me from starting my video right away. Now, I am usually the type of person to click "Proceed to your video..." right away, but something about this Virgin Mobile ad kept me watching. What was it?

This commercial combines a lot of things that would keep a viewer entertained. For one, the main character (Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne), is ridiculous and famous. Secondly, the video seems just SO absurd that you want to keep watching what will come next (this reminds me of the Mountain Dew goat commercial we watched last class).  But, just because the clip is SO ODD, does it sell Virgin Mobile in a productive way for the company? For me, the answer is no. I think that this almost looks like a desperate plee coming from the company - the use of hypnosis, the 3 beautiful women, the completely out-of-the-boxness - it all seems desperate to me. In addition, I think the tag line "retrain your brain" deters the viewer from thinking about Virgin Mobile, and instead has him/her focused on what your brain is trained to think of as far as cellular service is concerned (for me, it's Verizon Wireless). 

Overall, this clip provides some entertainment, but I think it brands Virgin Mobile as really out-of-the-box and maybe not the go-to service provider for that reason. 

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On Tuesday, March 26th my Facebook news feed turned red - literally. Almost everyone of my friends had changed their profile picture to the Human Rights Campaign's re-colored equal sign logo. While I was aware of the start of the Hollingsworth v. Perry Supreme Court case, I did not realized what these equal signs meant until I did a little bit of digging. Well - not that much digging. Some of my friends decided to write a caption explaining the photo, and other's simply shared Human Rights Campaign's post explaining the photo. What I want to look into is the personalized approach many individuals took with this image. One of my friends who is out, superimposed the image over a picture and his boyfriend. Another friend, simply made the red and white photo her profile picture. 

After looking at everyone's photos I found myself asking: How do I feel about this? And this is the best I can come up with:

For those people who are involved in gay-rights issues and truly are engaged with the case going through the supreme court, I think that empowering themselves through posting  this photo is great. However, I know that Facebook has become the platform for individuals to try to present their "ideal self" and maybe not who they really are. And so, I think that those individuals who made this equal sign their profile just as bandwagon fans are almost delegitimizing those individuals who are involved. If you saw the image, and did some research and are now closely following gay-rights, then fine. But if you just made the image your profile picture because it was the "hip thing" to do on Tuesday, well - educate yourself about the issues first. 

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Authenticating Celebrity Endorsements

“People are so skeptical of everything, and when they see Kobe Bryant eating a Big Mac they say, ‘No way,’ ” said Mr. Morrissey, referring to the basketball star’s former endorsement deal with McDonald’s.

  The skepticism surrounding celebrity endorsements is no new occurrence. And for companies around the world it has become a main goal to bring on celebrity endorsers without it seeming phony, or outright ridiculous. One company that has successfully done this, while using today's technologies to their full potential is Weight Watchers. 

  Ana Gasteyer, former SNL star and current actor on "Suburgatory," recently joined the Weight Watchers celebrity team. What makes her addition to the team different from many others was the way in which it happened. The New York Times published an article on March 27th 2013 describing Gasteyer's journey. 

  “I came down from ‘Suburgatory’ season one and snacked for four months,” Ms. Gasteyer said in an interview. “I packed on a quick 15 and flew up an astonishing two sizes.”

  She then decided to try out Weight Watchers and ended up tweeting to her 70,000+ followers. Some tweets included:

“Hey @Weightwatchers,” Ms. Gasteyer wrote on Nov. 30. “How many Activity points for sweatily trying to get out of a Spanx undershirt?”

“Hey @WeightWatchers how many #activitypoints for re-threading stringthru the waistband of my gym shorts? Came out in dryer so can’t workout.”

Clearly these tweets were engaging and humorous. Weight Watchers CMO, Cherly Callen, was made aware of Gasteyer's online engagement with the brand and invited her onboard. 

I think that this way of bringing on celebrities is ingenious and the most honest thing a company can do. To the public eye, Gasteyer was just like anyone else trying Weight Watchers, and so her endorsing the brand becomes authentic and truthful. I wish that more companies would take this approach, instead of finding some hot-shot start and paying him/her to stand in front of a camera and say how amazing a product is. 

  NYTimes Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/business/media/weight-watchers-online-teams-up-with-ana-gasteyer.html?ref=media&_r=0

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UNREAL Candy's Sorry Bunny Campaign

UNREAL Candy is a new candy brand that has "unjunked" the world's favorite candies (Snickers, Reeses, Milky Way, M&M's and Peanut M&Ms). Well, it turns out that Easter is a great time to be selling lots of candy - and I think that UNREAL has created a very innovative marketing plan for this Easter.

Meet, Sorry Bunny.

In addition to these creative videos, UNREAL also created www.sorrybunny.com. On the website they have the videos, and blog posts, an apology letter to the public, etc. 

I think there are 5 aspects of this campaign that will make it successful:

1. It creates a meme-like character: Memes are the "it thing" right now. We have seen many companies successfully create a meme-like character in their advertisements (Progressive, Old Spice, etc.). Sorry Bunny works as a meme, because of the simplification of the Easter Bunny into a character who is sorry about delivering "bad candy" for years, who doesn't speak, and who is fully created by UNREAL.

2. They use their celebrity connections: This campaign features celebrities such as Tom Brady and John Legend. This legitimizes it, and makes it entertaining for viewers. 

3. Social Sharing is very easy: With things like YouTube videos, or a website, social sharing becomes very easy. This campaign allows an individual who enjoys - say - one of the videos to go ahead and post it on a friends Facebook wall, Tweet about it, etc. 

4. It is relevant: This is an obvious one - it makes sense to launch a campaign like this around Easter, because $2.1 billion dollars was spent on Easter candy last year! 

5. The videos are SO entertaining: UNREAL did a great job of creating different types of videos for the campaign. Some are less than 30 second long with no talking, others are full songs, or a full story. The variety keeps viewers from being bored and makes them want to watch more. 

Check out my Prezi for a more interactive take on this post!

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Conclave 2013: The Role of Social Media

In this day in age social media is at the core of any international headline. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook allow users around the world to add their own opinions to a world-wide conversation about a piece of news. This becomes interesting to look at in context of the Conclave, the selection process for the new pope. 

According to ABC's article that was published on March 10th, while the secrecy of the process will be maintained within the walls of the Sistine Chapel, it doesn't mean that the rest of the world won't be chiming in via social media. Apparently there have been websites set up such as Pope Alarm, Fantasy Conclave, and Adopt a Cardinal, that allow and facilitate this world wide conversation. 

Pope Alarm will send out a social media blast the second a new pope has been chosen. Fantasy Conclave allows participants to place bets on potential popes. Adopt a Cardinal assigns an individual to a cardinal that he or she will keep in his/her prayers. 

What does this all mean? Well, most importantly I think that this 2013 Conclave will be especially interesting because of the wold wide participation via social media and websites. Secondly, the contrast between the old fashioned ways of the selection process and today's technology make for an interesting conversation about the situation itself. 

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/conclave-2013-electing-pope-social-media-world/story?id=18697577

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Snickers V. Reeses

WIth Easter coming up, candy companies and brands are going all in with Easter marketing. One company that has done a great job at this in the past is Reeses with their infamous Reese Eggs. People love the Reese Egg and I think it has become a "classic Easter candy." 

Well, just today Snickers announced the release of their *new* Snickers Egg! My question is, who are they trying to fool? They posted this on their Facebook page:

First of all, they didn't "rip off" the egg from Easter, they stole it from Reeses. This is made all the more obvious by the use of the orange color: Snickers colors are traditionally red, brown, blue and white...not orange! If you took a look at a Reeses Egg you would see that they used orange, which makes sense, because that is one of their brand's colors. 

Overall this social media post confused me, and it clearly ticked off a lot of avid Reese Egg fans! Just look at some of the comments below:

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Colgate's Creative Advertisements

This is probably the best ad campaign for toothpaste/mouth care I have ever seen. Please note that I said for toothpaste/mouth care and not for Colgate specifically. 

Colgate released this campaign this past summer and they did a number of things that made it extremely successful to the viewer. For one, the advertisements don't use words, which leaves the viewer scanning the image for something, anything, and guess what the first thing you notice is? THE FOOD IN SOMEONES' TEETH! Secondly, the viewer then finds him or herself wondering, "okay, so the guy has something stuck in his teeth - so?" And that is when he or she looks really closely to read the small text: Not even [whatever was wrong with the image] gets more attention than a mouth without care. And that's when the viewer realizes that - hey! - the guy has an extra hand, or and extra finger, or a missing ear! 

The reason I think this campaign worked very well is because it proves to the viewer the importance of taking care of your mouth. However, I don't think that it does a great job of showing the viewer why he/she must buy Colgate products in order to do this over some other brands like Crest. I think this ad campaign is very creative and humorous  however, Colgate needs to take it one step further to show why someone should buy COLGATE products over any other products. 

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Ad-Age's Digital A-List: OREO

Oreo has been ahead of the pack when it comes to social media integration in their marketing campaigns. With their "you can still dunk in the dark" image they tweeted during the Super Bowl blackout, Oreo shocked the marketing world with their speed and ability to capitalize on the shocking moment during the game. For this reason, in addition to their previous social marketing tactics, Ad-Age selected Oreo to be on their Digital A-List 2013. 

As a student who is particularly interested in social marketing, I find it very interesting to look at what Oreo has done and understand why it has been so successful. Ad-Age's article discusses Oreo's 100th Anniversary "Daily Twist" campaign - the company posted a "different cookie image every day for 100 days that often played off daily news events, including a Shark Week Oreo and Mars Rover Oreo." But, why was this campaign so successful?  

1)    The campaign used RELATIONAL tactics. By having a new Oreo design each day for 100 days, the company was able to relate with each market that would be attracted to whatever day it was. For example, those who love Shark Week, would love the shark week Oreo!

2)    The campaign made Oreo seem like a FRIENDLY AND WELCOMING brand, because it didn’t keep the focus on itself and instead it opened up the celebration to tons of different people.

3)    The campaign took advantage of the SHARE-ABILITY of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. By promoting the anniversary directly through these social media outlets, the company skipped the middlemen steps of – say – a YouTube video, a post on their website, etc.

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Celebrities' changing roles in the branding world

AdAge published an article today that discusses the changing roles of celebrities in the branding world. As early as 1890, brands have used celebrities to sell more of their products; however, this article brings up the interesting point that today, celebrities are more than just a face of a brand, they are actually becoming “creative directors,” or “marketing heads,” for the brands. In the past 10-or-so years, having a celebrity sit in front of a camera and say why he/she loves a product has become phony to the consumer. This article touches on the point that brands might be employing these celebrities to make their endorsements seem more authentic to the consumer. Instead of receiving a check for saying a sentence about a product, celebrities now have stake in the companies they endorse, and maybe that helps the consumer feel more confident what that celebrity has to say about the brand. Some professionals in this industry find this new tactic to be just as deceptive as direct endorsements. However, Pete Favat (chief creative officer at Havas-Arnold) says, “…no doubt some people become celebs because they are truly creative people, so why not experiment?” His point resonates with me – why not try something new like this? I think it is true that someone as creative as Justin Timberlake can bring something fresh to Bud Light Platinum by taking on the role of “creative and musical curator.”

  Link to article: http://adage.com/article/news/timberlake-beyonce-marketing-titles/239712/

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The use of multi-image sequences on Pinterest

This week I would like to discuss an interesting phenomenon occurring on the Internet: the simplification of articles/posts into images as a means of increasing traffic to a website. As a “Pinterest-addict” I see “pins” like the ones below all the time: long images that are broken down into step-by-step parts. What is interesting to me is that the concept behind Pinterest is that you have this social media site, where people post images, but you can click through these images and be taken to different articles, posts, and websites. Many images on Pinterest are of one thing that relates to an article; however, recently, I have seen these longer, step-based images on the site more frequently. By analyzing these types of images, one can understand why they are affective. Take a look at the image of the apple chimichanga below:

This picture makes the food look gourmet, and, because of this, it might scare away potential cooks from going to the article to learn how to make this food. However, instead, look at the actual pin below: 6 individual pictures have been formatted into one sequential pin.

  This not only makes the process of making this food seem simple to the viewer, but also, provides the viewer with a preview of the process. Therefore, I think reformatting the image into a preview of the article actually increases the likelihood that someone will click through to the article.

I have included other examples of this below:

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Makeup Forever launched this “untouched” campaign about 2 years ago – even though this was a while ago, I find this advertisement to be powerful and interesting to analyze. There has always been a lot of hype and criticism around the beauty industry, because of the photo-shopping of their advertisements. Clearly, one can see how evening out a woman’s skin tone in Photoshop for a print ad for a foundation could be an issue. What is interesting with this Makeup Forever ad is that even though this was a 100% untouched photo of a woman, the ad still received some criticism, because it was not a close up photograph. Personally, I think that this fact is irrelevant – the ad is supposed to be selling the fact that Makeup Forever is so good that you don’t need to be touched up in real life; why then, would someone want to see a zoomed in picture of this woman’s face? It’s not like you would be staring at someone’s face from an inch away in real life. All in all, I think that this ad works, because the woman in it looks happy, and in addition, the words at the bottom of ad make the viewer feel special in a way – as if looking at the first ever-untouched ad is a milestone in this day in age. 

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Last night the New York Times published an article by Stuart Elliot entitled, “Super Bowl Ads Speak to a Generation. But Which One?” Elliot wrote that he found the majority of the commercials during the Super Bowl to be not only sub par, but also a missed opportunity for marketers and advertisers. He touches on points like falling back on “familiar strategies and themes” that appeal mostly to older generations. For example, brands like Pepsi, Audii, Volkswagen, and Century 21, all had commercials that would resonate with an older generation. One commercial that Elliot applauds, however, is the Taco Bell commercial in which residents of a retirement home escape “for the kind of night out their grandchildren would enjoy.” This commercial was humorous and, I thought, successfully sold the brand, because, as Elliot says too, it played more like a product placement ad than a commercial. In other words, one wouldn’t quite know what the commercial was for until the end. Overall, I did think the Super Bowl commercials were a little dull, and had humor that, at times, I couldn’t follow.

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A Pep Talk.