Tag: visual marketing

Getting Pinned

Posted on by Allison Heaps

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In a cyber-friendly world, be careful what you wish for — you just might get it on sale.

This week at Social Media Week New York, Huffington Post’s  Bianca Bosker moderated Reading Is No Longer Fundamental: The Shift To Visual Vocabulary (hosted by JWT) by engaging industry leaders from JWT, Nokia, and Curalate. Among the various topics surrounding the visual vocabulary discussion was a new model of marketing utilizing visual social media images procured from Instagram, Pinterest, and Buzzfeed.

Apu Gupta, CEO and Co-founder from Curalate, stated that “the shift from people and places to networks about things” is now here. According to the Pew Research Center, the social media users behind the “networks about things” have been classified into three categories: the creators, curators, and online image creators. Creators take pictures of themselves, curators post pictures found online and post to sites used for sharing images with others, an online image creators are a little of both. Which one are you?

The endless surge of social media “exhaust” allows companies, such as Brandwatch, to work with more than 700 leading brands and agencies in monitoring and identifying key insights from text-driven social media. Indeed, the current visual images created by curators and creators presents additional opportunities for businesses to partner with social media. Target and Nordstrom have utilized specific consumer-driven images displayed on Pinterest. Nordstrom has effectively created store merchandizing displays based on those most frequently “pinned” items.

Simply put, brands now know exactly what you want because you have told them! This, of course, is based on the assumption that all the ‘pinned’ items are analogous to a Facebook ‘Like,’ as opposed to a snarky “OMG” or the elusive “dislike.”

Craig Hepburn, Global Head of Digital & Social at Nokia, observed, “The biggest challenge is managing the images themselves.”

Hepburn also asserted that even news articles are being written entirely around images, while Gupta added that that is now a necessary to restore ”context to content.”  Will Palley, Trends Strategist at JWT offered this advice, “Brands need to be judicious about the images they use.”

It is evident that we live in a transparent world — even President Obama was busted taking a selfie. So the next time you pin, post, tweet, your fabulousness consider what you have released to the cyber universe.  In a final comment, Hepburn conceded, the “Biggest challenge is going to be around reputation management and privacy.”

Allison Heaps is corporate wellness advocate living in New York. In her spare time, she practices yoga, runs marathons, and sings jazz. She is a master’s candidate at NYU with a concentration is organizational effectiveness. Contact her here.

The Internet Has Many Languages: Learn Them At SMW NYC

Posted on by Sara Adam

New technologies have always changed the ways in which we communicate and express ourselves creatively. The printing press allowed for the novel and the video camera allowed for the new mediums of film and television. The Internet is changing the way that we consume information and marketers need to develop literacy to effectively communicate online.

  1. Reading Is No Longer Fundamental: The Shift to Visual Vocabulary, Hosted by JWT
    Don’t tell your high school English teacher, but the written word is not always the best way to connect with customers. GIF images and platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, are working together to make communication increasingly visual. JWT is a marketing and communications company that knows how to evolve to adapt in an ever-changing world, having been around for over 150 years. Learn from JWT what this increasingly visual language means for marketers as well as for society as a whole.
  2. Masterclass: Navigating Internet Subcultures: Reddit, Tumblr, Snapchat, and Twitter
    The Internet has many dialects and as a marketer, you will want to increase your fluency in all of them them. Each platform of engagement has its own set of implicit rules that will determine whether you participate effectively or not. This masterclass, hosted by Code and Theory, will go over the 5 most important rules for each of the 5 top Internet sub-cultures.
  3. How To Be An Internet Anthropologist
    Through studying the locals of each social media platform, your brand can learn to communicate with customers in the most effective ways possible. Understanding how people use the mediums, in addition to how they interact with brands, will put you far ahead of the competition Learn where to look to find the people whose interests align with your brand and what online behaviors impact your brand at this seminar hosted by Global Strategy Group.
  4. SUXORZ: The Worst Social Media Campaigns of 2013
    They say that you learn more from your failures than your successes. At this seminar hosted by Blogads, we are hoping to learn from the mistakes of others in an effort to avoid them at all costs. From the mouths of Don Steele (Comedy Central), Saya Weissman (Digiday), and David Berkowitz (MRY), these classic examples of what NOT to do will be as educational as they are hilarious.

Social Media Week loves marketing! But we also love entrepreneurship, technology and health, so don’t forget to check out the schedule to see our exciting lineup of speakers on these topics. Register for SMW here!

Featured image courtesy of shonk.

6 Ways for Marketers to Understand Millennials this Social Media Week

Posted on by Nicky Yates

Ok, New York, you’re stuck indoors with yet another snowstorm this winter, and we know what you’re up to. You’re feeding those guilty pleasures: those preferences on Netflix you never want anyone to see. Well, as much as we might hate to admit it, what we’re seeing on Hulu and other platforms is largely shaped by the generation coming behind us. There’s a reason Party in the South is debuting. And this is exciting.

Millennials are shaping our future, and we need to understand this. Everything from our recreational options to innovation in industries like health, you either gotta keep up or get out of the way. And we want to help you keep up:

  1. 5 Ways Millennials’ Habits Are Changing How Content is Made and Shared
    The first step is to admit you need a deeper understanding. So, we recommend starting out SMW14 with Complex Media and their friends to learn how the Millennial generation’s habits are causing a speedy shift in how content is created and distributed. From the discovery of new talent and Vine stars to the ever present listicle, you’ll need a deeper understanding of this generation to get your marketing on track.
  2. How To Build a Brand That People Don’t Buy, They Join
    The millennial generation is the most cause-oriented generation since World War II. So, how do you get them to buy into your brand with a movement? That’s exactly what Zady, charity: water, and Whole Foods have managed to master. Join them to hear more and take away from their case studies ways your brand can become more connected to our passionate generation.
  3. Fueling Social Fandom at MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central
    Once you understand millennials better, it’s time to look to those who serve them best. Comedy Central has the market cornered currently, and MTV was once king of youth. But for both, this demographic is key. The two have quite a bit they can share and learn from each. So, we’re putting them together with VH1 to highlight how you can keep your fan base engaged, drawing from their own examples in everything from online to apps. You can’t miss this session. (Don’t believe us? Comedy Central’s past event on How To Be Funny in 140 Characters was in such high demand that we had to repeat it last year!)

  4. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, a Conversation with Author danah boyd and Andrew Rasiej
    Now, it’s time to get advanced. Without contest, few understand youth better than Microsoft Researcher danah boyd. She’s written about what’s new in how teenagers communicate through platforms, and specifically how social media affects the quality of teens’ lives. And at SMW14, she’ll be sharing her findings on identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Anyone working with youth and millennials will need to stop in and check on danah.
  5. Reading Is No Longer Fundamental: The Shift to Visual Vocabulary
    Our streams are flooded with gifs, Instagram, emojis, and bitstrips. We’re moving to a very visual marketing period, and it’s driven by millennials. “Visual” is a new language that needs to be mastered. As we look to the future, we have to ask: Is this a new era for cross-cultural communication, or is it changing the way we think – and not for the better? JWT leads a group of experts to really look at this impact, particularly in commerce.
  6. The Future of Now: Health Innovation Track, Sponsored by Merck
    And while we’re talking about movements, no generation was more supportive of health innovation than millennials. They are now turning away from politics to find other ways they can create innovation in the healthcare industry. That’s something Merck knows a thing or two about. Value-creation in the healthcare arena is now inextricably connected to digital and social technology. In this special three-hour track, we’ll explore how health is innovating and what’s to come in the future.

Registration is open! Get your pass today here, and join us and our partners, Nokia for what will be an extraordinary week of exploring our always on, always connected world.

Rising To the Top: Percolate Reigning Content Marketing

Posted on by Nicky Yates

When one of your founders is labeled a Brand Genius in New York, you know you’re doing something right.

tumblr_m0kvc1VzZy1qln7vao1_500Percolate, a platform that publishes and measures brand content on social media sites, was founded by Noah Brier and James Gross. And both have business savvy and some serious tech knowledge. Only 3 years old, Percolate is a tool that many big brands rely upon, like Ford, Nickelodeon, and Jawbone. They’ve also seen some tremendous growth in that time, telling of their success. (Fun fact: the SMW offices took over their recent offices, in which we have NO idea how they fit their entire staff!)

They will be leading a special track focused on what will be a crucial skill for marketers in 2014: content marketing. To get you ready, we talked with James Gross a little more.

  1. James, can you tell us a bit about Percolate and what you do?
    At Percolate we have a vision to redefine marketing through technology and a mission to be every brand’s content marketing platform. We do this by providing technology to a brand across planning, inspiration, sourcing, creation, publishing, monitoring and analytics. If that sounds like a lot, it is. We are excited by the depth of our platform and our growing client base.
  2. Percolate is a New York tech darling. In only 3 years, your team has seen incredible growth. Can you explain how you’ve achieved such success and the foundation for Percolate?
    We believe in 2 things:

    Find the biggest challenge marketers have. We have found that with content, the atomic unit of marketing. Similar to how Salesforce built technology to help the sales department manage contacts, Percolate helps marketers create and manage content. When you solve the content challenge, you have the ability to work across the entire marketing department.

    Find the best people to come work with you. We believe NYC has some of the greatest people in the world across all the areas that we care about: engineering, design and business. We are proud to say nearly 100 people in NYC now work with us.

  3. Can you explain why content marketing should be integral to brands’ marketing?
    We believe in a social, mobile world your content is your ad. As marketing becomes more and more driven by platforms with billions of users and unlimited targeting capabilities, the challenge is not how are you going to reach people. The challenge is what are you going to say to them, and how are you going to scale and sustain it. Percolate is the full end-to-end solution for a marketer who is looking for a technology platform to scale their marketing efforts.

  4. User-generated content is often seen as a holy grail for brands. But it’s not often done right and there is a debate on how to properly use this content. Percolate has recently developed some tools to assist. Can you elaborate on why this was a focus and how brands can land on the right side of this powerful tool?
    Billions of people on social platforms capture branded moments every second of the day. The challenge for the brand is often times they can’t acquire the rights to UGC in a scalable, legal manner. Before Percolate, brands used all sorts of crazy techniques to try and secure the rights to images, videos and other UGC.

    Only with Percolate does a brand have the unique opportunity to reach out to anyone who has captured a brand moment and get the legal rights to re-use that content in any way they see fit. For the user, our experience is just better than anything they have ever seen before as it relates to how they can rights manage their content. We have seen both happy clients and happy users with our UGC product.

  5. A lot of Percolate’s tools focus on making content more visually appealing. What is the importance of a visual strategy and how can brands get started?
    At 1.2 billion images shared daily across the four largest social platforms, there is no question that brands have to have a visual strategy. Brands also naturally like to communicate visually whenever possible, as this aligns well to the type of storytelling they are used to in a medium like television.

    Brands can get started by reusing images from their archives, tapping into the enormous potential of UGC across platforms, and enabling their workforce to capture and share brand moments.

    At Percolate, we have built technology to help surface content from archives, manage and acquire UGC, and iOS/Android apps to activate the employee base. Our app Photographer that puts the power of creation in the hands of a brand’s entire workforce.

  6. What advice would you give to a startup or entrepreneurs in being more effective with their marketing?
    Buy Percolate as your first marketing investment. 🙂

    Also, take your brand seriously. There are two key components to a business as Peter Drucker once said – Innovation and Marketing. The rest are just costs. You live or die based on your brand, start building it from day one.

We’re honored to have Percolate join us this February. And we know you need to be in attendance when they’re on stage. Get in on the action here.