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B.P #11: Facebook Video of Bullied Child Goes Viral

On December 8, Facebook user Kimberly Jones uploaded a video to her account after she had to pick her son up from middle school in the middle of the school day due to bullying. The video shows her son, Keaton, in the car crying while detailing what his bullies do/say to him while also questioning why people bully other innocent people like himself. The video is emotionally charged and instantly resonated with Kimberlys friends who began sharing the video. The video almost immediately went viral and there was a flood of support for Keaton. The video made its way onto news websites and other social media platforms which is when celebrities and athletes began to take notice. Celebrities like Justin Bieber and Snoop Dogg reposted the video and shared that they want to get in touch with Keaton. Actor Chris Evans invited Keaton to his movie premiere and UFC president Dana White invited him to hang out at the UFC headquarters in Las Vegas. Dozens of other huge celebrities reposted the video with kind words for Keaton and to condemn bullying. As of Sunday night, Kimberly Jones’ original video has been viewed over 20 million times and shared over 400,000. A Gofundme page was created for Kimberly in order to help with Keaton’s future education costs and to ensure his overall well-being which has raised over $40,000 in just two days. 

This incredible display of kindness and generosity just goes to show the power and influence of social media. The popularity of the video was propelled by celebrities who are influences in their fields and help guide the behaviors of their fans who followed suite to share the video. This story also shows the power of online communities who have common interests and the influence of emotion on behavior. When people feel an emotional connection to a story, or a brand/product if I connect to class, they are much more likely to engage, share and even give money toward it. I think this story also shows that while consumers in the West are labelled as individualistic and self-interest motivated, and marketing for Westerners mirrors this idea, it is not always that black and white and there are many other factors for marketers to consider, the changing world being a big one. Whether people in the West such as us Americans are sharing this video because they genuinely care about their fellow Americans or are self motivated and just want to make themselves look better in others eyes, emotion plays a huge part in what we as consumers interact with. While it seems misguided to take a video about a child being bullied and turn it into a pitch for how marketers should play to consumers, they are very related. If big brands take stories like Keaton’s and use it to bring awareness to important issues like bullying along with their company, the brands will make money and the world just might become a little bit of a better place for all. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2017/12/10/a-boy-shared-the-pain-of-being-bullied-inspiring-thousands-to-show-him-love/?utm_term=.5a931793e09a

original Facbook post: https://www.facebook.com/kimberly.jones.568847/videos/1857237227638202/

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B.P #10: Reddit opening up 3rd Party App for Marketers

Reddit is a news, content, and discussion app and website that allows users to discuss unlimited amount of topics in discussion boards called subreddits. Up until now, marketers had to use the app and website the same as any other user in order to publish sponsored comments to the platform and manage private messages. The lack of third party apps allowal in these instances did not make it easy on marketers, and definitely did not encourage them to use the platform for promotion. But Reddit is slowly changing its way.

As of December 2017, Reddit is allowing marketers to use the 3rd party app Sprinklr to add their content to discussions and manage private direct messages. Sprinklr describes itself as a “unified customer experience management platform for enterprises. It provides social media marketing, social advertising, content management, collaboration, advocacy and social media monitoring for large brands.” Reddit has been trying to make the platform for accessible and enticing for marketers and this is the first milestone in that process. Basically it saves alot of time for marketers. Instead of having to use Reddit separately from all social media sites they are marketing on, the integration of Sprinklr allows them to manage all of the platforms they are marketing too from one service, Sprinklr. With all their ventures in one place, they will be able to much more easily gather and distribute data, information and other content. Whenever scandals or controversies break out, they often get their start, or are exposed, by users on Reddit. Because of this and the new 3rd party integration, brands will not only be able to manage data and content more efficiently, but it will help them stop or deal with any negative press before it even happens.

https://martechtoday.com/reddit-now-lets-brands-publish-subreddits-manage-private-messages-thru-sprinklr-207912?utm_src=ml&utm_medium=textlink&utm_campaign=mlxpost

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B.P #9: “The New Snapchat”

At the beginning of the month, Snapchat rolled out a big new update that changes the way that users and advertisers use and view the app. Snapchat was responding to user complaints that too much content from publishers, marketers and the global snapchat community was being added to the mix taking away from their interactions with friends. Snapchat took note and decided to make some changes.

Snapchat uploaded a 60 second video to YouTube clearly explaining all of the changes that the new update makes. In it, the most noticeable feature was the separation of content from friends and other publishers. Previously, all of this content appeared together, but now there are two separate areas of the app for each. When you first open the app, you are brought to the camera just like always. Now, instead of swiping right to get to all content, you swipe left to get to friend content and right to get to publisher content. Now what does this mean? For the users, this is great. It means they will not be bothered with advertisements or other distractions when casually using the app. For marketers or advertisers, their reaction is not so clear. For one, they will not have to compete directly alongside users friend content hoping to be viewed. But also, if a user is only interested in viewing user content, and not publisher videos, articles, stories, etc. then they can choose to ignore it all together by just not swiping right. This is a bold move for snapchat, for users like me who only enjoy interacting with content from my friends, we will cut off the advertised content completely. For users who did enjoy this content, they now have an entire section dedicated to it and will be able to discover more sources and with more ease. Until the update is out for a while it will not be known whether marketers will flock to this new update or be turned off by it. Only time will tell.

https://marketingland.com/snapchats-major-redesign-algorithmic-feed-means-brands-229329

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B.P #8: “Vine 2″

On Wednesday, Dom Hoffman, co-creator of Vine, the once beloved 6-second video sharing service that officially shut down January of this year, tweeted a picture teasing the return of the service in the form of a sequel. The tweet gave very little detail, it showed a picture of the letter and number “v2″ in vines signature font style with the background being Vine’s signature shade of green. The caption was just as simple, reading “v2.” Although very little was revealed, it didn’t stop fans of the service from getting extremely exciting for the follow up to Vine. “Vine” and “Vine 2″ instantly became trending on twitter and the announcement tweet itself has gotten 376,000+ likes and 178,000+ retweets in just over a day, showing the potential the new service can have.

 While Vine was extremely popular among users, the company had a very small group of people behind it who struggled with how to grow the app or make money off of it. They started off strong but slowly started to fall behind their competitors who were adding features much more rapidly than they were able to. This combined with the lack of money making opportunities led to Vines biggest stars and creators to leave the platform in exchange for other outlets. Once the biggest Viner’s jumped ship, it was a downfall for the company from there as they could no longer keep their user base to stay with them. While the top Viner’s were seeing huge numbers of “loops” (views) of their videos, Vine did not allow these influencers to capitalize on their success nor did they capitalize themselves on the popularity of these influencers. In order to succeed in this new venture “v2,” Hoffman is going to have to fix all of these crucial flaws with the original service or else he will see the same fate. It is very interesting to see if the online community will embrace and support this reworking of Vine and if they can not only sustain, but excel and have longevity as a social media service. They must hire marketers who are familiar with the space and can find creative ways to draw people to the app.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/12/06/ready-vine-2-0-co-founder-teases-new-app/928300001/

https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13456208/why-vine-died-twitter-shutdown

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B.P #7: YouTube Demonetization

Earlier this year people began realizing that major ad placements were being placed on YouTube videos that promoted terrorism, hate speech and that encouraged violence. This stirred up a big controversy and social advertisers began pulling and threatening  to pull their ads from the platform. This controversy became known as “Adpocolypse.” Not wanting to lose advertisers, Youtube did a major overhaul of its monetization process and algorithm to stop ads being placed on videos which it deemed inappropriate, controversial or didn't follow their standards of behavior. This resulted in them overcompensating which led to a huge increase in videos being demonetized, or viewed unfit for ad placement resulting in no money for the creators of the videos. The YouTube community and creators were upset because they were beginning to lose money while being given no explanation from the platform with no way for them to appeal the decisions. Even seemingly harmless content that followed YouTube’s guidelines were being demonetized.

When famous YouTuber Casey Neistat (8 million+ subscribers) revealed that his video trying to raise money for the victims of the Las Vegas attack was demonetized, there was a huge backlash from his peers and the rest of the community that propelled the issue into the spotlight. YouTube was accused of hypocrisy as Jimmy Kimmel’s video on the same topic was not demonetized and had ad placement all over it. Neistat made a video he titled “DEMONETIZED DEMONETIZED DEMONETIZED” which he expressed his frustration with the platform, explained why he thinks YouTube needs to take better care of its community who are the ones producing the original content and what they could do to fix their problems. The video was demonetized, gained over 2.5 million views and put increased pressure on YouTube to fix the problem.   YouTube’s community of creators is the most unique factor the platform has compared to their competition so they should be valuing it more. As a response to the backlash, in late October YouTube rolled out a new update to their monetization algorithm. On the update a YouTube Spokesperson said, “There will be a 30 percent reduction in the number of videos receiving limited ads as they move to being fully monetized...this updated system is an improvement, but it’s not perfect. We know there’s much more work to do, so if you feel the yellow icon is a mistake, please continue to appeal.” We will see what other changes YouTube will enact to help be more fair and please their community.  

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B.P #6: Twitter 280 Characters

After many weeks of testing and teasing a larger character limit, Twitter has finally increased the amount of characters each tweet could contain for all users earlier this week, doubling the count from 140 characters to 280 characters. With all changes, comes people complaining about said changes and this was no different. People took to the site to complain about having to read longer tweets. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took to his personal account to defend the change stating that while users have 280 characters at their disposal, their research shows that most users wont ever use the full 280 characters, most will clock in at slightly above 140. He emphasized that the change is giving people more options and flexibility, in no way are people being pressured to tweet any differently than they were. 

While the average user may not have interest in 280 character tweets, there can be some huge benefits for companies, public figures or anyone trying to sell a product. In the past with 140 characters, there was very little to space to market a product, so many people had to resort to typing a brief caption or headline and then provide a URL link to a website containing an article with further information. The problem with this is that in the internet age of today, many social media consumers have short attention spans and don’t bother to click links and read further into something. This became a problem for marketers on Twitter because they would need to find a way to condense a sales pitch within 140 characters in a way that could be brief but still provide all the talking points they needed. Now with 280 companies have much more space to send a message to their consumers in a way that is still very short, but that allows them to fit in much more necessary information. While the 280 characters are still very new, everybody from corporations, brands, journalists, politicians and more have been utilizing this feature to get a better message across to the public. It is interesting to see how the extended character limit will benefit social media marketers moving forward and to in what creative ways they will use this new freedom. 

https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/07/twitter-expands-280-character-tweet-access/ 

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B.P #5: Amazon Key

This morning, Amazon posted a video to their Youtube account introducing their new service, Amazon Key. Amazon Key is a service that comes with a special camera and front door lock pad that allows Amazon delivery workers to deliver packages inside of your house instead of leaving it on the doorstep. The delivery workers have a special scanner that they can scan against your door lock to unlock your door and place the package inside. The camera that comes with the package can be placed facing your front door so you can see a video recording from your phone of the delivery person dropping the package off and shutting the door when you’re not home. The Youtube video also shows a woman hiring a cleaning service through Amazon Key who go and clean her house while shes at work. Well, its safe to say the internet was NOT here for this new service.

Amazon’s consumption community quickly took to Twitter and Facebook to denounce and poke fun at the idea. It quickly started trending on Twitter, the trend filled with user generated memes and jokes about the service being a bad idea, invasion of privacy and being way too expensive. Many people joked that you would be paying $250 to allow somebody to rob your house. The community quickly changed the conversation around the service from Amazon’s intended convenience and innovation of home delivery to it being about privacy and the threat of danger. The video on Youtube currently equal likes and dislikes, which is almost unheard of besides on very controversial videos. It seems as if Amazon didn’t even pre-test the product with any sort of focus group before releasing it to the public because out of all of the tweets ive read, I havent seen one person defend the product. The main consensus of all the commentary is that nobody asked for this in the first place. Being a fan of Amazon and using their services frequently, this is dissapointing to me because while the service is obviously optional, it seems like the company is trying to force things on their consumers rather than listening to what their consumers want and catering to those wants. It is clear that consumers care about their privacy. Since social media is having very negative reactions to Amazon Key, it is interesting to see how Amazon will play this negative response and if they will possibly cancel the service all together. 

Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn7DBdaUNLA 

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B.P #4: Dove

This past week, Dove released an advertisement on their Facebook page which blew up on the internet as many accused the ad of being racist. I think this example is a great lesson for modern day social media marketers. The ad, marketing Dove body wash, showed women of different skin tones wearing nude colored clothing. When one woman took off a layer of clothing she turned into another woman and so on. While the ad showed a black woman turning into a white woman who then turned into a Hispanic woman, trying to show that their products work on women of all colors and skin types, a screenshot was taken specifically of the black woman turning into the white woman and was circulated onto the internet. 

Based on the screenshot alone, it can be easy to think the ad is showing a before and after and insinuating that one woman is “dirty” and one is “clean.” But clearly this photo is taking the advertisement out of context and pushing a certain narrative. Certain online communities jumped on this photo, moving the conversation away from embracing diversity. Dove was forced to remove the ad and apologize for being racially insensitive, many without ever seeing the full ad. I think this is an incredible example of how careful and conscious you have to be in today’s day and age as a social media marketer. While Dove has always made it their mission to celebrate diversity among women, they still were not immune to this scathing internet response. They were not immune to their ad becoming a meme in the way that it did, and no company is. The black woman from the advertisement even wrote an essay in response to the backlash telling people to not play her as a victim, she doesn’t believe the ad was racist when looking in regards to the full ad, and that she believes Dove should have stood behind their create vision instead of apologizing. Still, the internet already had its mind made up that they didn't like the ad. Today’s society falls under guidelines of political correctness while our citizens are more sensitive and easily offended than ever. I am not saying whether this is a good or a bad thing for the future, it is just a fact of life and marketers must be aware of this and change the way they make advertisements to avoid harmful controversy towards their company in the future. I’m sure although Dove never had any ill intentions, they will learn from this and pay more attention to the specifics of their marketing campaigns. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/09/dove-faces-pr-disaster-over-ad-that-showed-black-woman-turning-white.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/10/i-am-woman-racist-dove-ad-not-a-victim

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B.P #3: McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce

McDonald’s recently launched a new menu item, buttermilk crispy chicken tenders. As a way to spread awareness of the new item, McDonald’s has launched a very smart new marketing campaign on its social media platforms. For one day only on October 7th they are bringing back their famous Szechuan dipping sauce which was a limited launch in 1998 as a promotion for the release of Disney’s movie Mulan.  Even though the sauce was released almost two decades ago, it gained huge popularity and became a pop culture hot topic just recently thanks to the immensely popular television show Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty is an animated show on the Adult Swim network about a kid and his time travelling scientist grandfather and the adventures they go on together. The show is the most popular and acclaimed show Adult Swim has ever had and has amassed a dedicated cult following. There has been an ongoing joke throughout the show about the characters wanting McDonald’s to bring back the delicious sauce. This has caused the shows fans to bombard McDonald’s social media pages with requests to bring back the sauce and there was even a petition started online. A single packet of the original sauce was even put on ebay and reached a $4,000 bidding price. McDonald’s clearly recognized the popularity and demand for the sauce so they decided to capitalize on this demand by using the sauce to advertise their new chicken tenders. Here is one of the advertisements McDonald’s released this week:

While McDonald’s didn’t outright saw that the TV show was directly responsible for the promotion, they did mention time travel in their announcement post and called Szechuan “the years most talked about sauce.” The ad also features many crazy looking inter-dimensional characters veryyyy similar looking to characters featured on the show. 

I would say that McDonald’s is definitely following the “consumer is in charge” motto of social media marketing because they are basing this advertising campaign completely on the desire of the consumers to bring the sauce back.  They are also using behavioral segmentation, clearly targeting people who watch the show and followers of current pop culture. They are also using demographic segmentation in my opinion to target the teenage-young adult consumer, the main demographic of the TV show, the fun crazy cartoony advertising strategy they use are an example of this. Consumers will be following a validation impulse by going out on October 7th to buy the sauce. Since its such a limited, one day event, people who get the sauce will likely post to social media to brag or show off that they were able to try the famous sauce, drawing much attention and jealousy from followers making them look good or “cool.” In addition, McDonald’s is going to benefit from the association technique we learned in the in-class video we watched. When people are going to talk about Szechuan sauce after October 7th, they will likely automatically think of McDonald’s chicken tenders and the promotion.

I think this event will be very successful, while they seem to be targeting the youth, they also have nostalgia on their side and will likely see many older people who remember the sauce from 1998 who will head to McDonald’s on Oct. 7th so they can get their first taste of the sauce in 19 years. They are also giving out limited edition posters on with the sauce so they are really making a big event out of it. As a fan of Rick and Morty, I will definitely be going to try the sauce.

https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/1/16385268/rick-and-morty-mcdonalds-szechuan-sauce

https://buttermilkcrispytenders.com/ 

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B.P #2: Toys ‘R’ Us

As many people have probably already seen, toy store giant Toys ‘R’ Us has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this past week surprising many people. In this blog post I want to detail what went wrong for the once prosperous company and give my opinion on the matter.

Toys ‘R’ Us has been struggling with debt for some time now. They have been facing heavy competition from other huge retailers such as Walmart and online from sites such as Amazon. I think another big factor in the companies struggle has to deal with today’s culture and what is popular among kids these days. With the rise of technology and social media, less kids are wanting to play with regular toys and are focused more on electronic devices such as cell phones, i-pads, video games, etc. When I was a a young kid, Toys ‘R’ Us was one of the most exciting places to go. Getting a new toy and playing with it with your friends was one of the best feelings. Nowadays many kids would rather communicate and play with friends virtually through a device, and kids are becoming accustomed to using technology at much younger ages. I believe Toys ‘R’ Us is definitely to blame for not being ahead of the curve and changing up their strategy to fit the changing times.

In the past few years, Toys ‘R’ Us desperately needed to invest more into strategic planning and developing brand new marketing plan to keep the company on top of the market. Instead, it seems the company stuck to what they have been doing for years thinking they would continue to have the same positive results. When other major retailers are selling much of the same stuff that Toys ‘R’ Us is, along with other items besides just toys, what is compelling people to go to Toys ‘R’ Us over the other retailers? The company needed to put more focus into the online aspects of the company as well as the social aspects which is why people love playing with toys and games in the first place, to have fun with friends and family. If I can order a toy on Amazon from my bed and have it arrive at my doorstep in 2 days, why would I bother driving down to Toys ‘R’ Us unless i am getting something more out of the experience. 

Toys ‘R’ Us now says that the bankruptcy filing will allow them to invest in a long term plan to keep the business going and they will focus on the customer experience inside of their stores. Hopefully they will take a more hands on approach like they had in their giant New York City location, where instead of just looking at the toys in the boxes you can test them out and play around, hopefully bringing back the joy that kids like me felt every time we walked in the store.

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B.P #1: iPhone X

So as we all know by now, Apple revealed three new iPhone’s this week at their Keynote event on September 12. The three phones revealed were the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and the only one anybody really cares about, the iPhone X (10). In this post, I wanted to detail what makes the iPhone 10 unique, as well as Apples marketing strategy and how I believe they strongly rely on social media to popularize all of their products among the masses. 

Here is the iPhone X. It is the first iPhone to get rid of the home button, the entire front face is the screen. With the removal of the home button comes the removal of fingerprint scanning aka Touch ID. To make up for this, Apple has implemented facial recognition into the device so you can unlock your phone just buy looking at it. It also has improved processing, camera and other less exciting features.

Apple live streamed the entire keynote event on Twitter and Facebook so anybody could watch all of the anticipated reveals right as they happened. After the event, they released some online video announcements of the phone but besides that, Apple is not spending a lot of money on marketing up to the release of the phone. I think this is because 1) Every iPhone they have ever released has been successful due to their huge dedicated fan base and reliable image, it is almost unnecessary 2) Social media networks and the people on them are the best advertising they could have, and this marketing is cost-less and requires no work on Apples part. 

Social Media is a free marketing tool that can quickly reach massive audiences in a way that other forms of marketing cannot. As soon as the keynote ended, various terms from the presentation were already trending on twitter, including #AppleEvent, iPhone X and facial recognition. Besides the trending, twitter, Instagram and Facebook users took to jokes and memes, using comedy to bring further attention to the phone and its new features through a youthful lens. Though many of the posts on the phone were negative, highlighting the $1000 starting price, a full glass build which is just asking to be shattered, or the problems they see arising from the facial recognition software, I think in this case all publicity is good publicity for Apple. First off, these comments are jokes, and they are minor concerns, not major functionality or software problems. Apple’s reputation is so strong that as long as people are mentioning their product, it is going to sell, and i’m sure they know this better than anybody. 

Apple can thank social media users for bringing awareness to their products and helping the iPhone reach and maintain its status as a pop culture phenomenon of the new millennium. As time goes on I envision Apple relying more and more on social media marketing and this digital word of mouth to push their products as the world and the ways we communicate continue to evolve.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41249367