Social Media

03
Aug
2016

Instagram add a very Snapchat-esque new feature

Instagram have just launched a new feature called ‘stories’ in a pretty brazen move trying to emulate one of Snapchat’s main functions. So, while Snapchat has recently added features that make it more like Instagram (i.e. Snapchat ‘Memories’), Instagram have done the opposite and added a feature that makes it more like Snapchat.

All of this echoes some of the developments that other tech and digital media companies have made over that last couple of years that move away from what made them unique in the first place. Today, everyone seems to be scrambling around video, live streaming and ‘stories’. The boundaries of these platforms are continuing to blur.

At the end of the day, whoever can leverage the most revenue from their users wins. Any platform can add any new feature that they want. Whether they were the ones to take it to market first or not doesn’t really matter. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.

FYI, while Snapchat is growing at a tremendous rate, Instagram still has DOUBLE the amount of daily active users (300m vs. 150m respectively).

Introducing Instagram Stories from Instagram on Vimeo.

Posted by Rob in Facebook, Snapchat, Social Media
20
Jul
2016

Snapchat is trying to make itself more sticky

Snapchat is a smash hit, there’s no denying that at this stage, especially among younger users. But you don’t win in this game by standing still. This month alone, Snapchat has added a couple of new features which aim to make interaction on the app more sticky, making a concerted move away from the ephemeral nature that defined the app in the beginning.

‘Memories’ is a new feature that helps users preserve and showcase their content by letting them save and categorise their snaps, and thus maintain a longer-lasting personal profile. They’ve also been testing out a new feature that makes following other accounts easier than before, which aims to address the challenge of finding and following new people.

A few months ago, the platform rolled out auto-advance stories, a process that automatically plays friends’ stories one-after-another creating a seamless video-roll of everything you’ve missed since your last visit. And while this was met with some disdain by users, it’s how they plan on facilitating ads, leaving the door open to inserting ads that automatically play between your friends’ posts.

Posted by Rob in Marketing, Snapchat, Social Media
10
Apr
2016

Emotional Branding: A John Lewis Case Study

When it comes to utilising the viral nature of the web to capture the collective hearts of a nation and breath new life into an old brand in the process, very few companies have been as successful over the last few years as John Lewis. The launch of their Christmas ad campaigns are widely anticipated and commented upon each year and immediately spread like wildfire on social channels.

By far my favourite talk at last month’s Dubai Lynx Festival was the case study from the head of the creative team behind the account, James Murphy, the founder of London agency adam&eve DDB, who have dragged the brand kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century since winning the account in 2009.

John Lewis as a brand traditionally didn’t really believe in the concept of marketing and even saw it as somewhat “beneath them” according to Murphy. And while the company had almost 150 years of history behind it at the time, and was extremely trusted by their customers, this didn’t necessarily inspire affection. Murphy describes the brand personality as that of the ‘mother of the bride’. Not exactly cutting edge.

The result of the collaboration was a total revamp of what the brand stood for, with a huge focus on using emotion to instil a sense of connection with the company and tap into the theme of ‘thoughtful giving’ at Christmas. And while most people think of the hugely successful Christmas video spots, the campaigns themselves go a lot deeper, encapsulating a truly multi-channel approach both offline and online (go to 16:30 for an idea of the scope of the 2014 Christmas campaign). The latest results estimate a £5 profit for every £1 spent on marketing which is a pretty staggering success whatever way you look at it.

If you are in any way interested in the power of emotional branding, the below video is 29 minutes well spent.

Note: the videos of these talks are kept behind an attendee login so can’t be embedded. The below image is a link to the direct video source.

john lewis

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Branding, Social Media
04
Feb
2016

Mobile messaging, and what it means for brands

For the last 6 or 7 years, the growth of social media has been a phenomenon that’s affected everything from the way we communicate with one another to the way we consume media and entertainment. But as Social Networks make the move to being de-facto media distribution channels, users have overwhelmingly started migrating to messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, LINE etc. to engage in more meaningful communication with friends and family.

It may come as a surprise, but in 2015, the Big Four mobile messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Viber) overtook the Big Four Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) in monthly active user numbers. So it’s official; mobile messaging is where it’s at.

messaging

From a publisher’s point of view, some media outlets are already using messaging apps to connect with their audience in interesting ways. The Huffington Post are using Viber’s Public Chats to publicly share real-time conversations between their journalists. BBC News are using WhatsApp for user-generated content, gathering reader photos, videos, and first-hand accounts that it later repurposes on its live news blog, and The Washington Post are using Kik’s Promoted Chats to attract readers through quizzes and game-like experiences.

Either way, it’s clear that where users go, ultimately, brands want to go too, thus providing the incentive to technology platforms to facilitate this connection.

Much has been made of Facebook’s desire to turn it’s Messenger app into a much broader platform, enabling users to do more than just communicate with each other. Plans include everything from facilitating customer service, to ordering an Uber directly within a conversation, and even allowing P2P micro payments, all within the context of messaging. This is much like the most popular Asian apps such as WeChat and LINE already offer. In a way, the messaging aspect is a commodity service used to build a broad user base to offer a wider range of add-ons to.

WhatsApp is looking to get in on the action too. At last month’s DLD conference in Munich, founder Jan Koum spoke about the plan to remove the annual subscription fee to use the service and eventually cater to businesses (he gave American Airlines and Bank of America as examples), offering them ways to deal with customer servicing directly through the messaging app.

How might brands utilise messaging apps?

But all of this just poses the question of how exactly brands might use messaging apps to connect with consumers. Perhaps it’s not too crazy to think of WhatsApp customer call centres springing up in the developing world in the not-too-distant future, but surely there are possibilities far more interesting than this. AI responses to customer queries have been touted, but aside from a responding to customer complaints, how else might brands utilize messaging platforms to enhance customer relationships?

Perhaps ‘conversations’ with brands can be used to maintain customer loyalty and rewards programs, a friction free way of opting-in and continuing to use them.  Mobile loyalty apps have been sold as the answer to the problem of having to constantly carry around rewards cards and the like, but in reality, downloading a standalone app and registering your details to keep track of this seems to be as much of a turn-off as carrying around a physical card in the first place. Brands could also use messaging channels to offer personalised deals or suggest new products that their users might like. Something akin to the “If you like this, you’ll love these” style prompts that work so well on Amazon etc. Either way, it sounds like a smoother way to interact with customers and prompt them into action.

But at what point might this become a nuisance, and are most consumers really open to engaging with brands on channels that they also communicate with their friends and family on? Well it would appear that they are. Recent consumer research in the area is encouraging. According to a 2015 MEC survey, 79% are not opposed to engaging with brands on chat apps. That sounds like enough of a mandate to me. Even if actual user behaviour turns out to be a little less enthusiastic about this once it becomes the norm.

I’m sure we’ll slowly start seeing some examples of these concepts over the next 6 months or so as Facebook and friends turn on the tap and unleash some of the functionality that third-party developers have been working away on since F8 last March. In the meantime, we’ll just have to put our thinking caps on and come up with some interesting ways to utilise messaging channels to connect with customers.

Posted by Rob in Facebook, Mobile, Retail, Social Media, WhatsApp
14
Nov
2015

Activate’s Tech & Media Outlook for 2016

It might come in at a gruelling 136 slides, but this 2016 Tech & Media Outlook from consulting firm Activate at last month’s WSJ Live Conference is jam-packed with interesting stats, insights and projections for the future of technology, media and entertainment. It’s a bit of a slog if you’re trying to absorb all the information presented, but it’s well worth a skim through at least.

Posted by Rob in Media, Social Media, Tech