Tag Archives: Advertising

My Third-Party App Pinterest Wish List

I always say the reason foursquare was able to beat out so many early competitors in the location-based space (Gowalla, Facebook Places, Whrrl, MyTown) is because it welcomed open source development on its platform. Foursquare’s API is its most valuable asset. And everything from the careful documentation to the hackathons foursquare has hosted screams “We want you to use our technology to make awesome apps!” In today’s development environment, APIs are sort of like the famous line from Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will build with it.

Right now, developers can’t wait to get theirs hands on the yet-to-be-released Pinterest API. Here are some app features I’d like to see developers build.

1. Scheduling

Pinterest creates amazing opportunities for brands to have fun with their customers, drive

traffic to their website and even gain insight into their customers’ wants and desires. But like most social networks, marketers can’t just “set up a Pinterest and let it do it’s thing.” The newsfeeds are based on recency, so Pinterest requires constant updates and maintenance.

Third-party apps like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and CoTweet have made social marketers’ lives much easier by providing the ability to schedule posts. Pinterest needs the same type of feature.

2. Selective Unfollowing

Every new social network struggles with the “my friends aren’t here” complaint. Pinterest addresses this challenge by having its users automatically follow all of the boards users’ Facebook friends create. That’s great when the Pinterest party is small. But as this network becomes more mainstream, users won’t need as much help finding a critical mass. The result of the auto-follow feature for me has been a newsfeed crowded with wedding dresses and interior design. I’ve spent a lot of time unfollowing those boards (not the users) to get the newsfeed I wanted. The automatic following is leading to manual unfollowing, and that’s a problem.

A third-party app could automate this. I would log in and indicated that I want to follow my Facebook friends on Pinterest, but I only want to follow their boards about comedy, infographics, photography, latte art, Star Wars, and dancing gorillas. An app could take that input and, based on the tags and descriptions of my friends’ boards and pins, ensure that my newsfeed only gave me content I wanted to see.

I want to follow my friend @MShahab, but some of her boards don't interest me.

3. Recommendation Engines

The search function on Pinterest is really weak. It appears to sort only by recency, not by popularity. That’s great if I’m looking for the latest pins, but not if I’m looking for great boards to follow. There are a lot of recommendation engines out there for other social networks; Pinterest needs one too.

4. Data Visualization

My favorite third-party app for Instagram is Statigr.am. It’s a site that visualizes your activity on Instagram in ways a basic visual feed style doesn’t. Statigr.am lets you see your most used filters, what days of the week you typically post, your biggest fans, most popular photos and more in an infographic-esque style.

I’d really like to see a Pinterest data visualization tool. It would be great for helping brands optimize their content on Pinterest, and it’s a lot of fun for consumers to look at too.

There’s some speculation about when Pinterest will release its API, but when it does, I expect there to be an onslaught of third-party apps taking Pinterest to the next level.

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March 31, 2012 0 Comments Short URL , , , , Social Media, Technology

What I didn’t get to say at #MASStalent

MASStalent (an event at Hill Holliday)


Monday night I was part of a panel of Gen-Y digital marketers and innovators that made up the first event in a movement called #MASStalent. From what I understand, #MASStalent aims to bring students and young professionals together for conversation about the future of all things digital. The kickoff was nothing short of awesome. It was headed up by Hill Holliday’s DJ Capobianco and organized by Emerson’s Zach Cole, BU’s Maurice Rahmey and Northeastern’s Aaron Gerry. Kudos to those guys for putting it on.

[Watch video of the panel here]

I got to speak on a few topics during the panel including the role of social media in a campaign and why SCVNGR isn’t the “next big thing.” But I noticed a few questions posted on Hill Holliday’s windows that did not get answered. Here’s the rest of what I would have said, but never got a chance to.

Augmented Reality

Right now, it’s too early to look at AR as a whole. Pieces of it are developing on their own. So if you want to know about where AR is going, study up on where location technology is going, where image recognition is going, and where hologram tehcnology like GE’s Ecomagination Smart Grid campaign is going. It is a combination of these things–location, image recognition, 3D objects–that will make up instantaneous, design-oriented access to information. That is what AR will be, but it hasn’t all come together quite yet.

This is sort of what I’m talking about (except it will be optimized not to be so overwhelming):

The Education System is Broken

One goal of #MASStalent is to help students understand what they can do before graduation in order to be ready for work in digital industries. My advice is this:

  1. Recognize that your professors are ignorant of new technology. I am overgeneralizing, but not by much. In my time at BU, I might have had two professors who knew that they actually did not know everything.
  2. Read Mashable and TechCrunch as much as you can. Test as much technology as you can. Learn as much as you can outside of class.
  3. Shut up. Don’t point out to your PR professor that a blogger will think you’re nuts for trying to pitch them via snail mail. Just keep your head down and do it. You’re never going to convince them that the ways they have known and loved their professions are now irrelevant, so spend your time and energy worrying about more important things. It’s a sad reality, but it’s true.

The Hardest Part

One student asked what defines success for Gen-Y in digital industries. If you can convince people to say “yes” to new ideas about technology, you will be successful. That’s a lot harder than it sounds, and it’s something I struggle with daily. That goes for fellow employees, clients, customers, consumers, everyone. Humans are creatures of habit, and their initial instinct is to reject the unfamiliar. Get them to break that habit, and you will win.

Next Trend in Digital

I saw a post-it asking, “What’s the next trend in digital besides group buying and location?” Yes, I really do believe that group buying and location are the two most important trends right now. I also believe in the following equation:

Foursquare + Groupon = beautiful rainbows and baby bunnies

But since that isn’t the question, I’ll say that collaboration is the next next big trend. There are so many mobile applications and so many social networks that at some point we will need to see more collaboration. TriOut is a thought leader in this respect. It’s an iPhone app and web app that lets you check into multiple location-based services at the same time. It adds its own features as well, but the collaboration piece is key. More developers will be using more APIs than ever before as time goes on. Platforms will encourage third-party apps, knowing that they are crucial to success.

Our panel at #MASStalent

That’s it. I’m given away all of my knowledge. Stay tuned into the #MASStalent hashtag for future brain orgasms like Monday night’s.

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November 17, 2010 4 Comments Short URL , , , , , Technology

Old Spice Embodies New Trends in Social Media

If you’ve spent any time on the Internet this week, you seen the Old Spice video responses campaign marathon. It’s a marketing ploy so invasive, it’s incredible; so unbridled, it’s unnerving. The brand’s YouTube channel now hosts almost 200 videos, most of which are customized responses to brand mentions on Twitter and YouTube video comments featuring Isaiah Mustafa, the actor and current face of Old Spice. Is this a showcase on the future of conversational marketing, or is merely testing the limits of how much we love when comedy covers stabs at our privacy? It might be both.

The idea is not anything new.

Remember the viral video sensation of 2007? Two kids made a YouTube video of a glitch in an EA Sports Tiger Woods Pro Golf video game.

EA responded with a YouTube video that ran on television as an ad with a claim that there was no glitch; that Tiger Woods was actually was good enough to walk on water. The video received almost five times as many views as the user-generated parody:

Wheat Thins will hunt you down

Last month, Wheat Thins started hunting down Twitter users who comment about the the popular crunchy product. The Wheat Thins squad physically tracks down the people in their homes or when they’re out at a restaurant leaving one victim bewildered, glancing nervously at the cameras and wondering aloud, “Don’t I have to sign something?”

The Old Spice campaign is no doubt miles ahead of other viral marketing attempts. Take a look at Visible Measures’ statistics from the video series’ first few days:

To me, this campaign was really eye-opening. It signifies two major trends happening in the new media world right now:

1) A business-driven convergence of popular social media platforms.

Think back to 2009. Which two emerging trends went crazy that year? Twitter usage was the biggest upward trend. The other was online video, which, with the help of Hulu, took huge strides.

2) Advertising taking some control over social media

The Old Spice campaign was organized by Weiden + Kennedy, and it was an aggressive move from the advertising firm. Having graduated from Boston University with a PR degree, I’ve been told PR departments should control social media. Now, I’m being exposed to some different points of view. While I still think PR skills (notice I didn’t say “firms”) are best to handle day-to-day “conversation management,” I’m seeing advertising disciplines (again) taking the lead in creating social media campaigns.

If you want to read more about the Old Spice campaign, see the following articles:

http://mashable.com/2010/07/15/old-spice-stats/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295266/Old-Spice-adverts-masculine-ever.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

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July 16, 2010 2 Comments Short URL , , , Advertising, Social Media

I like MyLikes

I was asked to do a little research writing sample for a job application. Basically, I was supposed to find a few new developments in social media technology and write up a feature piece on them. In the process, I stumbled across an interesting service called MyLikes.

I decided to give it a shot. If you’ve been seeing me tag some recent tweets with “[sponsored],” that’s why.  So far (after two sponsored tweets) I’ve made $1.12! Not much money, but it’s more than the usual $0 my other tweets make. If you want to join, they gave me a referral link:

Anyway, here’s the feature I wrote:

Media Type

MyLikes is a hybrid of earned and paid media. There’s a small part of it that’s paid media because the advertiser controls where sponsor links lead. It’s earned media because since every member can only promote one paid link per day, the advertisers are competing for relevancy and product or service superiority. That competition is happening in the earned media/social media space.

Description

MyLikes pairs advertisers with influencers and allows those influencers to promote links and get paid by the click. It’s affiliate marketing gone social. I’d argue it’s an improvement on affiliate marketing because it focuses on relevance. There should be no surprise that it was founded by a former Google product manager and a former Google engineer.

MyLikes is an open social network. Members build profiles and establish interests by promoting or “liking” products and services. There is a selection of sponsored links they can choose to promote on various social networks, but they are only allowed to promote one of those per day to prevent users from spamming. MyLikes works with advertisers to match the best influences with their marketing needs, and those advertisers invite the top targeted users to promote their products. The member revenues flow into a PayPal account.

Content Flow

Content surrounding MyLikes is cyclical. The advertisers create landing pages and then buy clicks to those landing pages. The MyLikes members choose which links to promote and create content (which can be positive or negative) to frame the link within a certain context. Users who click on the links from MyLikes members through Twitter or Facebook are then taken to the landing pages.

What’s Valuable

MyLikes connects advertisers with influencers. There are a ton of people who have built up a following online for whatever reason: their video blog (about beer), their personality, or the cool stuff they do with their business. An endorsement from those influencers could be more valuable than paid media or owned media because of the simple fact that people listen to people. They are increasingly skeptical of brands. That’s part of the reason why I believe the future of marketing lies with people; not with brands pretending to be people. MyLikes also just secured some Seed funding this month. Robert Scoble also jumped onboard as an advisor, so it seems the folks at MyLikes are truly living their brand.

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May 11, 2010 2 Comments Short URL , , , , Advertising, Social Media

Simply Selling Sex

Let me ask you a question: If I wanted to buy a web domain, where would you tell me to go? If the first site that pops into your head isn’t GoDaddy.com, I’d like to know what is.

When I see the ads for Go Daddy, I’m bewildered at the company’s success. Somehow, Go Daddy managed to become the world’s largest domain registrar. You would never know that from its advertisements, though. Their strategy is strictly to get customers (and/or horny men?) to visit their homepage, effectively branding the site into their customers minds for when they eventually need a domain name.

The commercials never give any reason why Go Daddy is better than competitors. They never bring in celebrity endorsements—unless you count a showering Danica Patrick. The company forgoes everything that has ever been discovered about conventional persuasion and skips right to the sex appeal. In fact, most of the commercials don’t say what the company does at all!

We in the Internet marketing/PR world argue against the effectiveness of paid advertising. So how is it that these commercials—some of them banned–have helped drive Go Daddy to the top of its respective industry? Well, I’ve heard the three most powerful brands around are the words “free,” “sex” and “Harvard.” Well, if the GoDaddy.com advertising approach over the past four years isn’t evidence of that, I don’t know what is.

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June 29, 2009 1 Comment Short URL , Advertising

TV Advertisements: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

My first public relations class at BU causes me to look at all advertisements and communication methods through a critical lense. I am constantly analyzing marketing schemes and advertisements, asking “What’s the message?” “How is it delivered?” “Is it communicated successfully?”

Here are my thoughts on some television ads I’ve seen recently – one good, one bad, and one just plain ugly.

The Good:

A simple and humorous juxtaposition makes this ad one of the best on television. The message: “Heineken beer is as exciting as a walk in closet.” The ad delivers the message in the one swift cut to the men. But what pushes this advertisement to a higher achievement reached by most beer commercials is the product resonance. The signature Heineken green shines in stark contrast to the white lights. This is not one of those “funny beer commercials.” It’s a funny Heineken commercial. Great branding, great message, great delivery.

The Bad:

My roommate pointed the error in this commercial out to me a few weeks ago.
He said, “I don’t know about you, but I kind of want software that requires a higher level of thinking than a 4-and-a-half-year-old can manage.”
While Microsoft’s decision to market their simplicity is attractive to a lot of people, those people are not digital natives, so they aren’t the future. Microsoft makes a mistake with this ad by placing themselves as the industry leader of the past. Eventually, the demographic of people who want to upload a photo with software that has only simplistic, primitive features will die out and leave behind the younger demographic now with the impression that Microsoft makes only basic software not suitable to their needs.

The Ugly:

Does the song get stuck in your head for weeks? Yes. Does that mean people subconsciously want to buy fish sandwiches? I’m not sure. It didn’t have that effect on me. I can’t really pick out the intended message in this commercial. And to be honest, all I can think about when I watch it is how nasty the last Filet-O-Fish I had was.

Agree? Disagree? Still singing the fish song? Other favorite or not so favorite ads?

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March 28, 2009 0 Comments Short URL , Advertising

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