Recently, I’ve noticed that when I’m watching YouTube on my phone, certain ads play that appear to be in virtual reality. These ads allow the user to control the perspective of the commercial using their phone. Whatever direction the viewer points the phone, the screen shows it. I personally love these commercials. They allow an interactive experience for the viewer. Typically, ads are boring and I just skip over them as soon as I get the option. But whenever I see one of these ads, it catches my attention and I find myself much more interested and I normally time playing around with it. I think that the addition of these ads is genius. It engages the viewer and creates something that the viewer will remember because it is unique. Whether or not the brand is important to the viewer is not what is important, what is important is that the ad sticks in the memory of the viewer. This creates the valuable virality that advertisements want. I have shown these commercials to whoever I am around when they pop up so I know that other people are doing the same thing. The creators of these ads knew what they were doing. They took advantage of new technology to promote their brand. I think that we will be seeing more and more of these ads in the near future. These vr ads open up a whole array of possibilities for the advertisement world. I am excited to see what the future holds.
Category: Uncategorized
IHob, Love It or Leave It
Back in June 2018, IHop made a marketing decision that unleashed a wide response throughout social media. IHop started by having viewers guess what the “b” stood for in “IHob”. People tweeted out their responses and #IHOb soon was trending. They soon after released the b stood for burgers and had people believing they really did change their name to this. This again, got people talking as unbelief set in. How could the loved IHop change its name? We realized in later dates that this was just a social media stunt and we slowly recovered from our scare. However, the damage was done as millions tweeted about IHob and their social media engagement skyrocketed. There was little in between feelings, with viewers saying it was the best campaign they had ever seen and people calling it the worst. According to Food News Feed, “overall, to-go comp sales hiked 32 percent during the quarter. To-go traffic grew by 23 percent. Burgers helped the dinner daypart significantly, Rebelez said, which, when you strip back the social media fervor, was really the anchoring purpose of the IHOb launch.” ( ) Seems to me that no matter how you may feel about their strategy, the effort helped their sales which was the overall point of the campaign. 50% of IHop customers came only for breakfast, IHop tried to change that, and succeeded. IHob shows the power social media can have. People respond to tweets and respond to people responding to the tweets. IHop utilized social media with curiosity, engagement, and by shocking viewers. People respond best with engaging posts. Social media works wonders for campaigns. Whether you think IHop’s was good or bad, that is up to you. However, you can not deny that the power of social media is vast and wonderfully demonstrated by the IHob campaign.
To union or not to union
Since January, large news corporations have been making cuts to jobs after being deemed unprofitable.
Buzzfeed was the first to announce layoffs at 15 percent of their workforce (about 200 people). Next was Verizon Media Group, which owns the Huffington Post and AOL, laying off eight percent of their workforce (about 800 people). And Gannett was third.
Part of the reason these companies have to cut is because of slow advertising. Facebook and Google are at the top of the advertising food chain, getting more for their dollar than the rest of their competition.
New York Times media reporter Edmund Lee said this:
“The conceit around the Internet is it’s sort of vast and endless and all kinds of places to go. In reality, it’s really just Facebook and Google and sort of everyone else.”
All of the job cuts means journalism as a whole is in more danger than just the Trump administration goes. Lee mentioned that we might see companies merging in the near future (i.e. BuzzFeed joins Vox).
I think mergers would be a great way to join audience groups together to indulge on the same style of content in one place rather than many. Like I’ve said before, I never really considered BuzzFeed or likewise media to be news corporations, so consolidating them to one or two would be ideal.
Since the layoffs, BuzzFeed News employees have decided to unionize and encourage compensation of their then-coworkers.
The group published a letter on Medium urging Ben Smith, editor, to pay for the laid-off employees’ vacation days and paid time off that had not been taken. Smith et al. read the letter and chose to compensate all employees who had been laid off.
“We look forward to meeting with the organizers to discuss a way toward voluntarily recognizing their union,” Smith said.
If BuzzFeed recognizes the union, they will have to negotiate who would be covered. If not, the union leaders will bring forth a “union election with an official from the National Labor Relations Board present to facilitate a secret ballot,” according to the New York Times.
LinkedIn Debuts Live Video Feature In Efforts To Increase App Engagement
Earlier this week, LinkedIn announced that the company now supports live video in their app. The announcement of LinkedIn live comes off the tail end of Instagram and Facebook’s live features that debuted in the past. President Pete Davies said that “… live has been the most requested feature”. It’s simple, people enjoy taking a glimpse at other peoples’ lives through live features across social media platforms worldwide. In fact, statistics show that video content performs twenty times better than posts with text alone.
Live will allow more than 600 million users to stream their experience in the professional world. This may consist of keynote speeches, conferences, Q&A’s. In the future, LinkedIn plans to support third-party apps in the future that will allow users to edit their footage that they previously streamed.
I think Live is huge for LinkedIn, especially since it was the most requested update that the company received. In light of other social media platforms introducing live quite a while ago (Snapchat, Instagram/Facebook, etc.). While these introductions were more for social interaction, I think LinkedIn Live provides a way for people to explore other companies in a more formal and professional setting. I think LinkedIn should be cautious about is their regulations in which they allow users to stream. LinkedIn does a great job of providing a strictly professional social media service to its users. The last thing that they would want is for their Live feature to become just another casual social media site. Not that I think that it will happen, but I think that they should stay on top of it before it becomes an issue.
New Rules for the Juul
The FCC Commissioner is recently fighting back against advertising done be e-cigarette companies. The Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969 prohibited cigarette advertising on television and radio. However, this law did not prohibit any advertising against e-cigarettes (because there was no such thing). Advertisements geared towards the e-cigarettes are everywhere and are aimed at teenagers. By using things like the Juul, teenagers are using e-cigarettes twice as much this year as they were at this same time last year. The FDA recently made a new law where you must be 21 to buy e-cigarettes, however, they cannot get involved in the advertisement side of things. While the companies would never say directly that they are aiming to get the attention of youth with their bright, fun advertisements it is pretty easy to see. They offer various flavors which have caused a nicotine addiction outbreak. Even though the company says the aim of their advertisements is to stop cigarette smoking it has been proven that the e-cigarette is just a gateway into actual cigarette addiction. The FCC is concerned that they are about to see the next generation have a huge nicotine addiction due to how advertisements encouraged and normalized it. E-cigarettes are being advertised heavily in retail stores, television, the Internet, and print media such as newspapers and magazines which means that youth are likely to see advertisements about it daily.
As a 20-year-old girl, I can say without a doubt that I personally see advertisements about e-cigarettes quite frequently and I definitely think that is a problem. It is especially scary to me because we do not know the long-term health effects of them. I believe that there does need to be a law banning the advertisement of e-cigarettes for our generations sake.
“Smoking & Tobacco Use.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 Nov. 2012, http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/by_topic/policy/legislation/index.htm.
Rosenworcel, Jessica. “FCC Commissioner: We Need to Crack down on e-Cigarette Advertisements.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 13 Feb. 2019, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/13/federal-communications-commission-e-cigarette-ads-addiction-juul-tobacco-nicotine-column/2632905002/.
“Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 Mar. 2018, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6710a3.htm?s_cid=mm6710a3_w.
I Miss the ETrade Baby
ETrade is an investment company based in New York City. They provide services to individuals who want to invest online. They had an ad campaign that was very popular about 5-10 years ago that featured talking babies. These babies, through a series of gags and baby related humor, were used to show just how easy using ETrade was. The point they were trying to make was that ETrade was so easy that babies could use it. The babies electronically given adult voices and their mouths were made to appear as though they were speaking the words themselves. These commercials were great. They featured cute little babies getting themselves into adult situations and I for one think ETrade should bring them back. Their commercials were captivating, memorable, and hilarious. Here is one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbnWbdR9wSY
I think that these commercials featured that “Valuable Virality” that I talked about in my last blog. They give the audience something to remember and to talk about. I can remember my dad always quoting ETrade’s commercials when I was younger and the fact that they still stick with me today says something about their impact. I personally have shown these commercials to my friends and family so I know for a fact that these commercials successfully achieved the valuable virality in at least one of their viewers. I think that this is one of the most clever and entertaining ad campaigns that I have ever seen. I wish they would bring these commercials back. I miss the ETrade baby and think they should bring him back.
“The egg” becomes the most-liked picture on Instagram
Earlier this month, a new Instagram account surfaced with the goal of becoming the most liked picture on social media, ever. Chris Godfrey, the man behind the account, posted the picture with the caption “Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this.” Well, it happened. To this date, Godfrey has over 52 million likes on the photo, almost tripling the previous record.
Godfrey works for an advertising agency in London. Which probably helped his project up and running so quickly. Since being posted, the egg has since been aired on a Super Bowl ad and a Mental Health advertisement. The ad shows the egg being cracked from all the “pressure” it’s been receiving. It then goes on to say “If you’re struggling too, talk to someone.” All in all, the world record egg ended up getting more attention than originally anticipated. But, even if the success was a fluke, it still worked.
Eventually, I could see more and more people trying to break this record in the future. But as of right now, I just don’t see it happening. When I was in high school, the most liked picture on Twitter was a selfie that Ellen Degeneres posted that gained only 3.3 million likes. At that time, I thought that there was no way that a picture could get more than that. But here we are, 5 years later, with a picture that has close to 55 million likes. I am curious to see what the next big picture will be. But, for now, we must wait and see.
Do Youtubers = Publicist?
Youtube has easily become one of the most influential ways to promote things from people to services. You can show an experience and give feedback without having to go through making a pitch, you get to go straight to the consumer, fan, or audience. Coming from someone who watches a lot of “famous” Youtubers, and have tried Youtubing myself there are a lot of pros and cons that come with basically trying to be your own publicist. Being a Youtuber comes with its cost in today’s age. Youtubers are constantly being watched since it is a video platform,they are putting out videos constantly to grow your following, and for full time Youtubers, your following and how you are perceived by the public is how you make money, endorsements, and sponsorships. They are now not only a full time influencer, but also a full time publicist. Many Youtubers get in trouble for their words and actions in videos and become their own crisis management publicist so they don’t lose everything. I found out from making my own videos how much it takes into making a video and what you say counts and can make or break you. Trying to be influential is hard to do without making someone mad, but the hardest part is not making your sponsor or endorser upset. Youtube can get views in a matter of minutes as an influencer. I believe Youtube is going to be the new outlet for Public Relations and Publicity in the near future. It meshes together so many different forms of Public Relations from promotion to crisis management. Soon most publicist will conquer what it means to be a youtuber, fixing their image just as fast as the professionals.
Avoid Advertising the “Dove” Way
Advertising and social media go hand and hand. This is a beautiful and helpful thing as social media helps the spread of advertisements and can quickly get the word out about what companies are doing. However, this can also go terribly wrong. We see this in the Dove campaign which shows a black woman “turning white” which sparked a huge backlash across social media. As soon as the ad was released, word traveled throughout social media as #boycottdove trended on Twitter by the next morning. Dove released a statement that said “An image we recently posted on Facebook missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully. We deeply regret the offense it caused.” The ad caused viewers to wonder what on earth Dove could have been thinking and what mark they were striving to hit. It is astonishing that an ad like that could cross so many different sets of eyes and not be flagged as potentially being offensive. Consumers called the campaign “horrendous and a PR nightmare”. This is a perfect example of how social media can come into play in a companies success or failure. The ability to share and view ads and opinions cause social media platforms to be an important factor in advertising. Social media helps to better customer service of companies, helps companies connect to their customers, and they get to increase their brand awareness. Dove should have thought about the ad in general and on top of that the effect it would have on social media. Social media helps to drive advertising and can be extremely beneficial to companies as long as they avoid what Dove did and put out appropriate ads for their campaigns. 
Quit Bugging Me
Love is in the air with Valentines Day coming up quick but sometimes finding the perfect gift is so hard but this year it’s being made much easier. Have you ever had an ex that gets on your last nerve? One that you somewhat despise in the nicest way possible. The El Paso Zoo ran an advertisement last week that has since gone viral that gives the perfect give for each of our special exes in our lives.
This is an example of an extremely successful advertising campaign that used its social media platform to gain awareness of it. The zoo posted it and got over 7,000 shares within a few days. People commented on it and tagged their friends who also shared it and tagged more friends. The advertisement displays cockroaches and hearts and says that if you pay a certain amount of money they will name a cockroach after your ex then let a meerkat “devour” it. Oh, also did I mention they will be broadcasting the entire thing via Facebook Live? The campaign has been so successful that they had to stop taking names. Ad Age even sent out information on it in their weekly email calling it, “Cockroaches vs. red roses”. I think the reason this advertisement was so successful is that you don’t have to be in “love” to celebrate this Valentines idea. In fact, you can be extremely bitter towards love and still participate. People are tired of the typical roses, chocolate, and cards. Having an edge on advertisement and being new and original is really putting new ideas on top of old, basic ones. I also think this form of advertisement is so interesting because it did not cost the El Paso Zoo anything. I believe modern advertisement is moving more towards this way because social media is so huge for our generation.
Worth, Dallas-Fort, and Nbc. “Zoo Receives ‘Overwhelming’ Response to Cockroach Promotion.” NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, 11 Feb. 2019, http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/Forget-Chocolate-Name-a-Roach-for-Your-Ex-Lover-505565471.html.
Lewis, Sophie. “This Zoo Will Name a Cockroach after Your Ex, Then Feed It to a Meerkat on Valentine’s Day.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 8 Feb. 2019, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/el-paso-zoo-name-a-cockroach-after-your-ex-feed-to-meerkat-valentines-day-feb-14/.
JMC 367 Spring 2019 Blog 