Hasta La Creative!

Like a bunch of lemmings jumping off a cliff, more and more marketer’s are jumping aboard Twitter’s Vine to tout their brands. Seriously. It’s like Pinterest doesn’t exist any more. Vine is the shiny new object du jour for marketers.

Not familiar with Vine? It’s actually a fairly cool app. It allows you to shoot six second videos that can be broken up into segments allowing for some fairly ingenious creativity.

Today, Taco Bell jumped on the bandwagon to announce the new product which will be available March 7.

It’s out of the bag. Coming March 7th. #CoolRanchDLT vine.co/v/bvlaYggdIiU

— TACO BELL (@TacoBell) February 13, 2013

Once again, Greece chocolate brand Lacta, which has become known as a symbol of “the sweetness of love” is out with another stellar piece of content marketing. This time it’s a full blown movie that tells the story of three couples who meet, face challenges and, in the end, find happiness. Or so we hope. The full length movie won’t be released until Valentine’s Day.

Over the years, Lacta has aligned itself with love telling story after story of people finding each other and falling in love. Now that might sound cheesy but it’s not. The campaign, created by OgilvyOne Athens is meticulously created and guess what, it works.

The campaign’s most recent work, a film called Love in the End, pulled in some impressive numbers.

– 17% of the Greek internet population viewed the original short.
– When broadcast on TV, the short garnered 18% viewership.
– A video posted by one of the characters received 300,000 views.
– The film’s song climbed to the number two slot on the Greek iTunes chart.
– Lacta is the number one Facebook fan page in Greece.

Did it sell any chocolate? In the end we will find out but we can tell you that a past campaign in Q1 of 2011 increased sales 9% amidst an 8% category drop.

MBA in Marketing Guide (yes, it’s link-baiting but it’s good information too) created an infographic that details the biggest wins and fails in social media over the past year or so. Top wins include DollarShaveClub, Nike, Sephora and Honda. Top fails include McDonald’s #McDStories, Chick-Fil-A anti-gay thing, American Apparel’s Sandy-themed promotion and Kitchen Aid’s tweet about Obama’s grandmother.

Check out all the details in the infographic.

It’s not a surprise social web has caused a dramatic sea change in digital marketing. From new methods of communication to how digital marketers now interact with customers, everything has changed. And many marketers are still like deers in an Interstate full of headlights making big mistakes.

The new social web – like it or not – demands a shift in marketing methodology that rewards creativity and a willingness to engage with customers in new ways. It also lends new opportunities to digital marketers everywhere

In this report from Gartner, part of the Adrants whitepaper series, you will learn:

• Why all media is social media
• How speed and agility often trump scale and media buying power
• The reasons your customers become a free marketing force
• The benefits of new distribution models
• The value of big data and finding bottom line
• Getting the most out of new, innovative design campaigns

Download the free report now to insure your marketing efforts are in line with the shifting landscape of the social web.

As you may have read, a Perth teenager, reportedly Matt Corby, posted a picture (which was Liked by 100,000 times before disappearing) of a footlong sub with a tape measure on it showing the sub just 11 inches long. Predictably, an epic firestorm has ensued on social media. And some responses by Subway don’t seem quite as genuine as they should.

Subway Australia responded (post that begins with “Who LIKES the sound of free avo on their sub?!”) to the swirling tempest in a teacup by saying, “With regards to the size of the bread and calling it a footlong, “SUBWAY FOOTLONG” is a registered trademark as a descriptive name for the sub sold in Subway Restaurants and not intended to be a measurement of length.”

On its Facebook pages around the world, Subway is responding but many of its comments are simple deflections and reiterations of the fact the the sub is simply called a footlong but that baking processes can affect actual length

In actuality, the fact the sub may be 11, 12 or 13 inches long isn’t really worth discussing expect for social meia trolls with way too much time on their hands. That said, social media has a way of bringing minor issues to mainstream conversation. The New York Post did some digging and found four out of the seven footlongs they purchased were shorter than 12 inches.

Of the tempest in a teacup, Landor Associates Managing Director Allen Adamson told the Huffington Post, “People look for the gap between what companies say and what they give, and when they find the gap – be it a mile or an inch – they can now raise a flag and say, `Hey look at this,’ I caught you,”

In its defense, Subway responded with a statement which read:

“As you know, all of our sandwiches are made to order, and our bread is baked daily in every one of our more than 38,000 restaurants in 100 countries worldwide. We have policies and procedures in place to ensure that our products are consistent and have the same great taste no matter which Subway restaurant you visit.

We have seen the photo you referenced of a Subway sandwich that looks like it doesn’t meet our standards. We always strive for our customers to have the most positive experience possible, and we believe this was an isolated case in which the bread preparation procedures were unfortunately not followed.”

Minor as an inch may be, the power of social media has the ability to magnify things in a way never before possible. And minor as an inch may be, a brand has to deal with the backlash.

Had we been manning the brand, our suggestion would have been for Subway to create, bake, and personally deliver a one inch sub to Matt Corby – and every other person experiencing the deficiency in length – along with several months worth of free coupons to make up for its mistake. It would have been a simple and hilarious solution. And, it would have been chatted up on social media just as much as the debacle that started it all.

Social media is a competitive landscape that many argue can make or break a company’s marketing.

Social Media in the U.S. has increased 356% in six years. These days the question isn’t should you use social media or not. It’s is your use of social better or worse than your competitors?

Inbound marketing company HubSpot has published an eBook, How to Crush Your Competitors on Social Media in 30 Days, which will teach you the following:

• How to compare and benchmark your competitors social presence
• How to grow your reach and followers faster than your competitors
• How to create engaging content people love to share
• How improve your social strategy with cross-channel campaigns

Download the eBook now and get crushing!

JWT has launched Most Tweeted Brands, a service that, well, tracks the most tweeted brands. Well, not all brands. It’s tracking the top 100 global brands as determined by BrandZ ranking. Processing over 2.5 million tweets each day, the site offers a visual representation of tweeted brand activity.

By clicking each brand, one can drill down to see a geographic mapping of tweet origination. One can also eliminate brands from the service which will redraw the prevalence of tweets as compared to other brands. This is particularly handy because Facebook, by far, dominates and pushes other brands off the chart. Reloading the page (or clicking the “reload all brands” button) brings all the brands back.

Additionally, drop down menus allow one to zero in on single countries and brand categories such as fast food, airlines, retail, etc. The chart can be viewed either in tile format or list view

A new startup, GazeMetrix, can identify brand logos in Instagram photos. The service, which uses image recognition software, was originally developed to detect which apps people have on their devices by pointing them at each other. When that effort didin’t pan out, the developers redirected their efforts.

The service, which will eventually rollout to Facebook and Twitter, makes it easy for brands to contact Instagram users who have posted branded logos and ask permission to reuse them on their own branded channels.

GazeMetrix offers brands yet another metric to, in a way, gauge consumer interest. While the prevalence of a photographed logo may not directly translate to brand recognition, brand recall or sales, that never stopped any company from measuring stuff and marketers flocking to it like lemmings in search of the next cliff.

Oh and by the way, it’s really no surprise Starbucks is currently the most photographed logo on Instagram.

In a hilarious speed dating-themed video created by Crowdtap, a company that promises to create real relationships, a parade of social media idiots representing how insanely stupid the space has become are taken to task.

Watch the video. We guarantee you’ve heard at least one individual or one company spew a litany or jargon akin to the silliness this video presents.

Please, can we stop the bullshit?

A couple weeks ago , I was briefed on a new company called OneSpot. Headed by venture capitalist and former head of interactive at the Houston Chronicle, Matt Cohen, the new company transforms existing content into ads that look more like content than ads.

After the briefing, I said the offering was “the perfect marriage of content marketing with the power and infrastructure of advertising.” Yes, I really said that and yes, that quote is front and center on the OneSpot website which launches today.

Recently, so much has been written about content marketing which, as part of inbound marketing, is all about making sure the right information is in the right place when people come looking for it. But, people don’t always know what to look for and they don’t always know which available products and services could benefit them. Hence, the need for outbound marketing.

For now, one of the most efficient methods of paid online advertising is the advertising network. With its new offering, OneSpot has coupled the power of and reach of the ad network with the informative and educational nature of content.

How does it work? Using OneSpot, marketers can automatically covert content they own or earned from social networks and reviews into IAB standard ad units. Then, with big ass back room data crunching that analyzes the content from which the ad was created and the ad itself, OneSpot matches the ad to appropriate inventory available on ad exchanges and places the ad using real time bidding. Optimization and retargeting help insure the ad continues to perform as effectively as possible.

Each created ad includes social sharing buttons allowing for further extension of the content.

And in the optimization and retargeting phases, different ad content can be aligned with different inventory based upon where the consumer is in the buying cycle. In other words, ads (that are increasingly more product-focused) can be sequenced to align with a person’s thought process; “I’d like to buy a new camera.” > “Do I need a point and shoot or a heavy duty DSLR?” > “Should I get the Nikon 5200 or the Canon EOS 50D?”

Of the new offering, Cohen said, “Over $16 billion will be spent on digital content in 2012 – blogs, reviews, videos, how-to tips, whitepaper, webinars, and more. For every piece of content your business wants people to see, you should have an associated distribution strategy to drive desired business outcomes: lead generation and nurturing, promoting reviews, or brand awareness. No distribution channel is as ubiquitous as online advertising. We see a tremendous opportunity to help businesses monetize their all their content using the power, data intelligence, and infrastructure of online advertising to deliver it.”

So in a nutshell, OneSpot is all about using the power and reach of the advertising network to greatly improve upon existing content marketing efforts. Think about it. If no one ever sees your content, was it worth all the effort it took to create it?

Remington Products is one brand currently using OneSpot. Of the experience, eCommerce Director Ryan Koechel said, “A content strategy is something we always thought we had prior to working with OneSpot, Previously we put out a piece of content through social media, our blog, or on our site and hoped we received some traction. Now with OneSpot we can get a piece of content in front of a ton of eyeballs on day one and then use the data to start building audience and re-target with relevant follow-up content. “

The full scope of the OneSpot offering includes:

– Instantly create and promote content ads on demand from your browser.
– Import content from blogs, social networks, or manually by URL.
– Add your own tracking code to measure performance, engagement, and leads for the content in your analytics package.
– Dynamic targeting:
– Network integration
– Retargeting
– Geotargeting
– Real time visibility into content marketing campaign success by measuring:
– Audience development including new readers and repeat visits
– Engagement level by site and demographic

Check out OneSpot here and a demo here.