Canon Predicts Digital Camera Demand To Decrease

Camera companies continue to improve their products like the DSLR camera, but the market for consumer digital cameras is falling. Canon President Fujio Matarai says that the volume of camera sales has been decreasing constantly for the past couple of years and in the next two years it is expected to fall from 10 million units sold a year to almost half that.

Most people today are not buying digital cameras anymore because they already have one in their pocket. Smart phones make it easy for everyday people to photograph their lives. The improvements in phone camera quality are often comparable to a DSLR. Amateur photographers and average people no longer need professional equipment.

The convenience factor of a phone camera is a pivotal element in the choice consumers make in buying a better phone or a better camera. People can shoot photos and videos, edit, and upload to social media, all from one device and still have decent quality. If that is good enough for people, they have no reason to buy one piece of gear for the same price they can have a whole set. This shift also hurts the stock photo and footage market. People do not pay to use photos and videos someone else shot if they are able to shoot it themselves.

If Canon wants to stay ahead of their seemingly inevitable decline, they need to market their cameras to everyday consumers. By seeing what makes a smartphone camera more desirable to people today, they can implement those features in their own products.

Fiji Water stumbles onto Golden Globe success

Award show season always has its share of groundbreaking advertising moments and stand-out publicity stunts, but few have captured the attention of social media like the ‘Fiji Water Girl’ at the 2019 Golden Globes.

Fiji has long positioned themselves as the water chosen by Hollywood’s stars, so it’s no surprise to see them at the Golden Globes. They’ve sponsored greenrooms of award shows, red carpets at elite events, and fashion shows around the world for years. What made this specific advertising moment reach vitality in the social media world? The face of Kelleth Cuthbert, Fiji Water Girl.

Cuthbert was hired to stand on the red carpet holding bottles of Fiji Water, but while Fiji’s CEO insists that she was given no further instructions, it seems as though the model was intentionally attempting to photobomb as many A-list celebrities as possible. Standing closely behind the likes of Jim Carrey, Dakota Fanning, and Camilla Belle, Cuthbert stole the show with her direct looks into the camera and demure smile. The model insists that the stunt was unplanned and that photographers caught her as she was repositioning herself or looking to move out of the shot, but the photos seem suspiciously intentional.

Whatever the case, social media ate up the photos of this well-dressed photobomber, with the CEO reporting over a billion impressions across all platforms. According to Apex Marketing, the brand also set a Golden Globes record for virality, earning impression numbers that hadn’t been seen in the award show’s history. Had the brand paid for those impressions through traditional advertising, they would have spent over $12 million to receive the same success.

What does the Fiji Water Girl teach us about virality? Sometimes social media success is calculated and well-planned. Other times, brands get lucky and have a model in the right place at the right time. Either way, it’s clear that the power of social media and the value of online platforms is crucial to the way brands interact with consumers today.

Namaste, Snapchat!

As Snapchat sought to expand its’ user base, they questioned what it takes to reach a broader audience. The answer?

Their native language.

With this in mind, Snapchat launched a beta test with 8 new language options including the following:

Hindi
Marathi
Gujarati
Punjab
Filipino
Vietnamese
Urdu
Malay

Looking further, the majority of these languages are primarily spoken in India, a growing market for social media. “With Facebook now serving more users in India than in the US. India is also the second biggest market, in terms of users, for both Instagram and LinkedIn, and given it’s the second most populous nation on Earth (behind China) – and the second-biggest smartphone market.” – Andrew Hutchinson, Socialmediatoday.com.

Snapchat was originally made for iOS devices which caused problems in reaching Android users. They struggled to make a version of the app for other devices, leaving many foreign markets out of the loop. Where India is not lacking in population, they are lacking in advancement. In2017, Evan Spiegel, CEO, allegedly said he did not have intentions of expanding the app’s reach”into poor countries like India”. Although Spiegel denied making the comment, it made a bold statement that people couldn’t forget.

There is some truth in the statement. Having India as a strong market for Snapchat would significantly increase users, but before that can happen, they need to cater to the needs of that market. Whether it be adding their native languages or making the app more functional with their technology, changes should be made. Snapchat has made a big step towards foreign markets and I think it only goes up from here.

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/snapchat-launches-beta-test-in-eight-different-languages/549789/

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/snap-inc-releases-better-than-expected-q4-numbers-showing-growth-in-users/516483/

Misleading headlines are the real fake news

Recently, a story surfaced about the now ex-assistant men’s basketball coach at Texas A&M-Commerce, Josip Maric, who was arrested for sex trafficking.

The story’s headline stated he was an ex-ACU basketball coach, which is true, but misleading.

Maric was an ACU coach almost a decade ago. Since 2010, he has worked at six different universities before beginning his most recent position at A&M-Commerce in 2017.

If we’re being honest, it’s clear most people only read the headline of the story, which doesn’t clarify that Maric hasn’t been an ACU coach in nine years. Instead, they are led to believe he was recently let go from the university because of his actions, which is completely false.

Not only does this stir up controversy in the city, but it also brings unnecessary scrutiny to our university.

ACU has been under a microscope for other matters in the athletic department, but now it is being criticized again for the false narrative that is created by this story. The university has very little to do with this entire situation outside of being a previous job position on Maric’s resumé.

If the New York Times had written a story like this, there would have been so many people “fixing” the headline in the comment section on social media, or rage-tweeting about it. If the Times can’t get away with writing a misleading headline like this, neither should local news organizations.

Local news is important to small communities like Abilene, but it needs to be held to the same strict standards as large news organizations like the Times. If we expect high quality content from larger news sources, we should expect it from local news sources, too.

It is understandable that KTXS cannot be held liable if readers don’t read the full story, but they need to understand how much weight headlines carry and how much they influence a person’s opinion. The headline they wrote negatively impacts the university for no reason and doesn’t mention the more important details of the story.

The purpose of journalism is to report the facts, not to skew the facts to create a false narrative. For KTXS’ motives, “ex-A&M Commerce basketball coach (that also happened to work for ACU nine years ago) gets arrested for sex trafficking” doesn’t have the same ring as “ex-ACU coach.”

Local news organizations need to do better than this.

Like a Girl

One advertising campaign that has stuck with me since for quite some time now was the Always “#LikeAGirl” campaign. I can still remember the first time I saw it was when I was 14 at an all-girls camp. The message was so inspiring to all of us at that time and still is today. At the time of the first release of the campaign, ‘Always’ had been falling behind to competitors and needed to revamp and reach younger girls. The brand released a few statements about the campaign that said, “We set out to champion the girls who were the future of the brand,” and “Girls first come in contact with Always at puberty, a time when they are feeling awkward and unconfident-a pivotal time to show girls the brand’s purpose and champion their confidence.” The campaign showed that women tend to lose confidence as they go through puberty and tend to forget all that it means to be a girl. The brand wanted to change the way it means to do something “Like A Girl” and take the negative connotation away from it. The response to the ad was more than Always would have ever thought. They received over 85 million youtube views from countries all over the world. The campaign won numerous awards and even went on to become a halftime segment at the Super Bowl. The fact that the ad came out in 2014 and is still being talked about today shows just how relevant it is in our lives and just how much of a hit it was. This ad was extremely cool and unique to me because it showed just how important the creative team behind the production was. They are who came up with the idea, supported it the entire way through, then executed the idea successfully in the end. #LikeAGirl is an ad that, I believe, will continue to be shown for years to come.

I’m here to endorse endorsements

This post might seem a little self-centered, but I think it has become a hot topic around the nation and soon will be a hot topic on campus. This might be lengthier than most, but I think it is crucial to understand.

Some people argue it’s an abuse of power for newspapers to endorse, but I’d argue…they’re wrong!

In the wake of Student Government Association elections coming up, and city government races drawing in more candidates, I wanted to use my last blog post to explain why newspapers (should) endorse candidates.

Though the Optimist runs quite differently than most major newspapers – our editorial board is comprised of staff members from each section, whereas most newspapers separate their staff members from the editorial board (to be fair, our staff is significantly smaller, arguably too small, to be similar) –

I’d have to agree strongly with Jeff Cohen, editor of the Houston Chronicle, when he says:

“We believe it is paramount for the community and electorate to be engaged and strongly advocate for participation. We think that editorial endorsements help provoke higher thought and cognition and is a motivation to partake in democracy.”

When the Optimist endorsed Beto O’Rourke for Senate, we drew had over 6,000 engagements, 174 reactions, over 200 comments and 74 shares on Facebook alone. It was our most interacted with piece last fall.

We started the conversation. We became a medium for our audience to engage in agreements and disagreements (both kindly and quite rudely). We also gave our audience the chance to vote with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (Beto won on Twitter and Insta, but Cruz won on Facebook).

Editor of the Denver Post, LeeAnn Colacioppo, backed the history of editorials – that if they go through the trouble of covering public policy (which obviously, is a lot more work than reading it), it is the right of that respective paper to express an opinion.

“That’s how an editorial page got started to begin with, in trying to make arguments that would be good for society. The reason we do endorsements is because we’re trying to help people understand complicated political questions. Whether that’s a candidate, as in a presidential endorsement, or an issue, like a ballot issue, where the devil is in the details.”

This election season, for both campus and Abilene, we will endorse the candidates we see best-fit for the position, and help inform our readers of why these said people deserve the office they are running for.

Don’t worry, we still accept letters to the editor!

Authenticity is Key

It isn’t a secret that social media is a driving force in today’s society. According to Statista, 77 percent of the U.S. population has some sort of social media presence. Many people take to social media to promote their businesses, express their opinions and give feedback. Social media is a great way for brands to have personal communication with consumers. Marketers take advantage of social media and use it to have an open dialogue with customers and analyze feedback. Other companies use social media to grow their platform and their business.

Currently, I work as an intern for a company called The Social Media CEO, formerly known as Small Talk Social. Small Talk Social is a boutique agency designed to help brands grow their social media presence. The company does this by helping a brand identify its voice and expressing it through content creation and creating meaningful relationships with the brand’s customers. Stephanie Gilbert, founder of Small Talk Social and The Social Media CEO, stressed the importance of building meaningful relationships between her company and the brands she worked with, as well as, the brands and their own customers.

The unique thing about Stephanie is how she chooses to work with companies owned by women and woman freelancers. She strives to empower women and help them learn how they can earn a living with social media. The Social Media CEO is opening a Clubhouse that allows women to connect and openly give each other advice on all things social media. The purpose of the Clubhouse is for entrepreneurial women to create genuine connections, give and receive feedback and share tips on how social media management works. The idea behind this is genius because it allows women to help build each other up instead of tearing each other down and hiding information that could help someone.

It’s refreshing to see a company that is actually concerned with building genuine relationships rather than hiding secrets and trying to make as much money possible.

U.S. population with a social media profile 2018. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/273476/percentage-of-us-population-with-a-social-network-profile/

THE Gum Commercial

One of my all-time favorite commercials is a commercial for EXTRA gum. This commercial follows a high school relationship that becomes something much more. This commercial tugged on the heartstrings of viewers everywhere. The commercial features the song “Can’t Help Falling in Love” playing in the background. It opens with the couple first seeing each other in front of the school building and developing some obvious attraction for one another. It then depicts the two students building a relationship, going on dates, and eventually getting married. In every one of their interactions, a stick of EXTRA gum is either traded, being chewed, or used after the scene for the grand finally. At the end of the commercial, we find that the man has been drawing a picture of each one of their interactions on the inside of a new gum wrapper. The final scene shows the woman being given a book filled with all of these drawings. She recognizes each of them except for one: a picture of a man proposing to a woman. She turns around to find the man on one knee with a ring. The commercial fades and we see the text “Give Extra, Get Extra.” I think that this commercial might be one of the best of all time. It captivates the audience with a story and appeals to the emotions of the viewers. Everytime I hear the song “Can’t help Falling In Love”, I think about the EXTRA gum commercial. I know that the creators of this commercial achieved their goal of valuable virality. I was seeing articles about this commercial for weeks after it aired. I saw it several times after the initial airing and each time someone knew made a remark about it. The people at EXTRA knew what they were doing. If you haven’t seen this commercial yet, here it is. fair warning, you might cry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exQESGDQspI