Hasta La Creative!

The key to social media success is to understand the platforms that best sync with your business. You must first be aware of the different platforms available, the benefits of each, and how you can leverage these benefits to promote your business online.

With more than 70 million users around the world (Semiocast), Pinterest is one such platform that can help boost your business in more ways than one. So, why exactly should you market your business on Pinterest? Here are five great reasons.

1. Build Trust & Loyalty: Every online business owner understands the value of gaining trust on the Internet. It would mean quicker conversions, better brand recognition and even positive referrals. When you upload pictures on your website or blog and ask people to ‘pin’ your photographs, you are instantly connecting with the online world. Showcasing your business offerings will help potential buyers to develop a better understanding of what you’re selling. By pinning relevant and helpful resources, you will attract followers, increase your authority, and build the trust of your followers, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and positive referrals.

2. Increase Brand Visibility & Website Traffic: More than 80% of pins are repins (source: RJMetrics) which means it is very likely that your potential customer will pin your product images to their wall, resulting in increased brand visibility. According to a Pinterest study, 69% of Pinterest users have found at least one item that they bought or were interested in buying.

3. Promote Your Products/Services: Pinterest allows you to include a text description with every pin you post. You can leverage that space to promote your product and/or service offerings or explain to users how that given pin can relate to a person’s personal interest. By doing so, the likelihood of a user repining your pin on their own board will increase.

You can use your Pinterest board as an advertising canvas for a promotional offer, a brand message or even a product launch. Utilising this feature could be vital for the growth of your business.

4. Leverage Third Party Tool to Increase Your Pinterest ROI: There are many third party Pinterest tools that can help you enhance your social media marketing experience. These resources could help you in many ways, from understanding live trends to even editing tools. An example of a few Pinterest tools include:

– Piqora: a powerful marketing and analytical suite that monitors how your pins and boards are performing.

– Pin Alerts: is a real-time Pinterest monitoring system that will send you automatic notifications every time someone pins something from your website.

– Pinstamatic: allows you to create custom pin-able links for your Pinterest board. This tool can turn locations, music, quotes, calendar dates, Twitter profile links, sticky notes and websites into pinnable links for others to share.

5. Reach Targeted Audiences: Pinterest allows people with shared interests to connect and share content with one another. You can leverage this activity by targeting niche audiences who can relate to your products and/or services. Use images that you know your target audience would “like”, share, or comment on. At the same time make sure you use relevant keywords. By using the correct keywords for your business, it is likely you’ll receive more shares by bloggers, a vital aspect for your company website.

If you want to learn a bit more about how your brand can benefit from using Pinterest, check out this 6 part video series from Social Influence Academy

This guest article was written by Jessica Hooper from Going Social.

(TrendHunter.com) Photographer Ilya Rathman from Kiev, Ukraine created this stunning makeup arts series featuring a variety of makeup looks on one woman. The photography series begins with her bare, naked face…

Brands are going all out with the holiday efforts. Among them, insurance provider Allstate, which has launched the “holiday decorator,” a deceptively sweet site created by Leo Burnett Chicago that invites you to pick any address and adorn it with seasonal knick-knacks such as lights, ornaments and candles. “Jingle Bells” plays in the background as you unleash your inner Martha Stewart. But once you mess up and put open flames in the windows or cause a short circuit, you summon the appearance of someone a little less jolly than Santa — the brand’s mischievous spokescharacter, Mayhem.

Seems like location-based websites are a hot thing in the insurance category. State Farm also has its “Chaos in Your Town” campaign, which unleashes a Pandora’s Box of destruction at a location of your choice, or wherever you happen to be at a given moment.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, tune in to Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Vine haters should (and likely already have) probably just skip this one.

New York-based sister companies Bodega Studios, Northern Lights, SuperExploder and Mr. Wonderful worked together to craft a Back to the Future holiday Vine, which you can view above.

It’s a pretty impressive production as far as Vines go, featuring a marshmallow playing the part of Marty McFly, a mini-DeLorean and a pretty real looking flame trail. If you’re looking for a few seconds of mindless holiday fun and/or are an obsessive Back to the Future fan, you can do a lot worse than viewing this one. We’re not exactly sure where the association between the 80s time-travel classic and the winter holidays comes from, but it’s cute and we’ve seen enough standard holiday cards to not bother complaining about such things. Enjoy.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Earlier this month, Sao Paulo-based F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi launched their “Electrolux Kindness Kitchen” campaign for Electrolux Brasil, which filled some of their appliances with food for those who want to do good this Christmas.

Here’s how it works: During this month, “when a consumer buys any of the ‘full’ products, he or she will receive the household appliance at home and Electrolux will donate all the food to those in need.” It’s a pretty simple way to do some holiday philanthropy, and one that can make a world of difference to a family in need. The campaign was designed to give back to the community and highlight “the company’s social positioning in the country.” It includes the above online film, as well as display ads, a hot site, and social media. This campaign’s focus on digital was nothing new for Electrolux, who invested 10% of the company’s communication budget on digital this year — making it the environment they invested in the most.

The video explains the genesis of the campaign, linking it to all manner of small kindnesses, and offers a brief explanation of how it works. It does a good job of introducing the idea behind the campaign and prompting viewers to further action, such as visiting the campaign site.

“Electrolux Kindness Kitchen” is a refreshingly philanthropic campaign, and it gives people a compelling reason to buy a new appliance during the holiday season. More companies should engage in this kind of community action, during December or otherwise. Credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

So Brazil is hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup and Itau Bank, with help from Agencia Africa, put together this epic (seems to be the word of the day today) video, entitled The Great Transformation, that shows the entire country of Brazil becoming encased inside a giant stadium.

Brazilians gleefully welcome the encasement. We’re not sure we’d like a giant wall around our country. Hopefully the walls aren’t patrolled like they are the walls surrounding Raccoon City.

Yea, we know this is a metaphor. And yes, the film is beautifully shot.

Speaking of Christmas miracles, The VIA Agency would like to make one of its own happen. The Portland, Maine, agency's house band recorded a six-track album of holiday music, and has launched a campaign to get David Bowie to cover one of the songs. Hey, it could happen.

The "Get It to Bowie" site is full of cheerful strategizing, including ways to tweet at Bowie's famous friends and get them to put the pressure on. There's also an amusing "Are you David Bowie? Click here" link, which populates a tweet field with the message, "@TheVIAAgency Yes! I'm in. #gotittobowie." (The project also has a charity element, as VIA is also asking for donations to support Maine veterans living with PTSD—and one of the songs is about a homeless veteran at Christmastime.) You can also, of course, listen to the songs, which are solid—a good mix of funny and heartfelt.

For now, the hashtag is the present-tense #getittobowie. It's a long shot, no doubt, especially now that Bowie is on the comeback trail with his well-received 2013 album, which got him three Grammy nominations. But who knows. Throw in an Angela Adams sea bag—actually, make that Louis Vuitton—and he might just go for it.

Technology company executives left a meeting with President Barack Obama with no commitment to limit government snooping on internet traffic, according to an industry official briefed on the session.

The group included executives from seven companies, including Marissa Mayer of Yahoo and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, that are pressuring the administration and Congress to restrict the National Security Agency’s scooping up of their users’ data. The topic consumed most of the discussion.

Ms. Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO and an Obama campaign donor, warned the president that backlash over U.S. spying may splinter the internet as countries adopt different standards to thwart surveillance, according to the industry official, who asked not to be named because yesterday’s discussion was private.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A tarde mal começa e recebo um e-mail de um grande amigo do Recife (valeu, Gui!) com um link para um dos TCCs mais divertidos (e bem feitos) que vi nos últimos tempos. O trabalho é de Matheus Santana, para a Universidade Tiradentes (de Aracaju).

O vídeo fala por si. Não preciso explicar muita coisa. Só peço encarecidamente aos professores deste rapaz: dêem 10 para ele.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
Twitter | Facebook | Contato | Anuncie

Chances are, this is literally the most gangsta advertising news you’ll read today. Employees at McCann Hong Kong paid tribute to their old office in a video that serves as an homage to  John Woo 1986 crime classic,  A Better Tomorrow.

The building, Sunning Plaza, has been McCann Hong Kong’s home for over thirty years, and its entrance was actually used as a location for Woo’s film. McCann was one of the very first tenants of Sunning Plaza following its construction and their heartfelt tribute makes it seem they will really miss their former home — and that they really know their Hong Kong gangster films. Sunning Plaza is being demolished for redevelopment, much to the dismay of its tenants (McCann and otherwise). McCann Hong Kong has already moved into its new office at Hysan Plaza, where they threw an office warming party last Friday. You can watch the tribute video above, in which McCann Hong Kong employees walk out of the building in much the same manner as characters in A Better Tomorrow, set to music from the film. These guys certainly know how to make an exit.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.