Hasta La Creative!

Today, in a move that pits the company against Amazon, online retailer Overstock.com said it would launch its own streaming and video-on-demand services, slated to be available by the middle of the year.

And funnily enough, in 2013 the satirical news site The Onion predicted just that.

It gets better, too: The Onion joked about Overstock’s “millions of customers,” and it seems that is exactly what the e-tailer is looking to capitalize on: “We already have the traffic,” CEO Patrick Byrne told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re looking for a bigger and bigger share of their wallet.”

Here are some tweets from today:

I’m beginning to think that @TheOnion is less satire and more prophecy. http://t.co/EZJauKdNgi ? http://t.co/hoQkgbh94d

— Jasmine Friedrich (@asynchronism) January 20, 2015

The Onion, 2013: http://t.co/UfcEuQql6p Reality, 2015: http://t.co/c1bFiiq3nQ

— Daryl Lang (@DarylLang) January 20, 2015

And here are some tweets from November 2013:

Guess who’s jumping into the original content game. http://t.co/0mfMl63xZr. http://t.co/bA552PWiBk Fine, it’s The Onion. But it’s funny.

— Eitan (@AnotherEitan) November 6, 2013

Brilliant and dead on! http://t.co/uNEpvqgBAQ Announces Plans To Develop Original Programming-The Onion http://t.co/PYHgkEQOsI #storytelling

— Ed Hersh (@StoryCentric) November 5, 2013

The Onion.com, known for its deadpan humor and mock-news network, has been expanding beyond its namesake site. Onion Inc. now boasts The A.V. Club, its entertainment-based sister site and Onion Labs, its advertising/marketing layer.

Onion Labs has created campaigns for everyone from Microsoft to Ford to Home Depot. Mike McAvoy, president of The Onion, recently talked with Mediabistro about this new branch of the company. McAvoy says: “It became our pitch really as a business [to] evolve with the whole native-advertising movement, as well as advertisers’ decision to change how they tried to reach millennials.” McAvoy talks about the most successful campaign they’d had so far:

I think we’ve had quite a few that have been good and have gotten good plays. We haven’t had the Old Spice viral campaign just yet, you know, where we’ve gotten 100 million [hits]. But we’ll let you know when we do. I think our most successful piece, our most viewed piece was [an] April Fool’s joke for YouTube [last year about the social-media site selecting the best video on YouTube], which has been seen by [over 11 million people]. We do a lot of work that is behind the scenes, white label or work for hire, where we’re creating content for a brand and the audience, or the world, doesn’t know it.

To hear more from McAvoy, including how he deals with native ads on his own site, read: So What Do You Do, Mike McAvoy, President of The Onion?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

O título deste post é uma tradução livre do novo vídeo do The Onion, Using Social Media To Cover For Lack of Original Thought. A inspiração deste “Onion Talks” é, claramente, as TED Talks – com direito à vinhetinha de abertura e aplausos intermináveis que impedem o palestrante de começar a falar. A diferença é que, nesta sátira, somos apresentados a um charlatão das mídias sociais, que já começa declarando:

“Mídias sociais são a força motriz da nova economia. O que isso significa? Ninguém sabe”.

Sem perdão, o palestrante se apresenta como um consultor de mídias sociais que nunca teve um pensamento ou ideia originais em toda sua vida. Ainda assim, sua empresa atende marcas como Shell, Cheetos e SpeedStick. Dá exemplos do trabalho feito por eles – ou seja, não empregar nenhum esforço para tornar a presença das marcas nas redes sociais mais efetivas. “Usar o seu cérebro para ter uma ideia e implementá-la é o velho modelo”, declara.

Vai além citando o “caso” do job feito para a SpeedStick, que queria ampliar sua footprint no Twitter. A solução? Contratar uma empresa que criasse perfis falsos, que teriam como único objetivo seguir a marca.

“As empresas não se importam sem seus seguidores são falsos ou não. Eles irão pagá-lo de qualquer maneira”.

Apesar de ser apenas uma sátira, infelizmente algumas das ideias trazidas por este vídeo não são inéditas no mundo real. No final das contas, esta “Onion Talks“ nada mais é do que uma aula do que NÃO fazer em mídias sociais.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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