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#MarketingTitbits – Masters of Marketing, Instagram, Google Analytics

award-photo1. Get your nominations in for brand of the year at the Masters of Marketing Awards
Marketing Week are seeking nominations for the ‘brand of the year’ category at the Masters of Marketing Awards, held at this year’s Festival of Marketing. They’re on the hunt for their readers to name the brand whose work has impressed them the most in 2015.

The Masters of Marketing is a new way of celebrating the most inspirational work in the marketing industry. The ‘brand of the year’ must be capable of showing the power of marketing to the wider business community, as well as demonstrating marketing excellence to their consumers.

To find out how to nominate, click here.

2. How Instagram is changing the way brands look at photography, online and beyond

Instagram has completely reinvented the way people see themselves and others. Design teams are beginning to see the benefits of moving away from over-edited photography and instead are favouring Instagram’s more organic look.

As Nathan Iverson states, evp and design director at Deutsch LA, “Instagram certainly isn’t pioneering the use of effects, but it is resurrecting and evolving an old-school aesthetic”. For advertisers, the network has quickly become one of the top ad platforms for major brands, so designers are beginning to move from traditional designs in favour of content that looks more natural.

Click here for more information.

3. How to stop referral spam from screwing up your Google Analytics stats

Google Analytics users will know the dreaded task of finding ways to stop referral spam, but we might have found the solution. Referral spam has been a trend for the last year or two, and is virtually impossible to prevent. It occurs when some corrupt website owner attempts to send bogus referral traffic to a website or product; however this is not actual traffic.

So how do we get rid of referral spam? Econsultancy shows us how Google Analytics filtering allows the website owner to filter out any concerning referral traffic so they can’t interfere in the future.

To find out how to do so, click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Periscope, millennials and social media platforms

periscope-millennials-social-smaller1. Periscope has 10 million users but advertising is ‘nowhere near top of mind’
Since its launch back in March, Periscope has gained huge popularity and has gone on to sign up more than 10 million users. Yet despite reaching this impressive milestone, Periscope’s CEO, Kayvon Beykpour, has said that the company is not focused on users, but engagement levels instead.

Unlike parent company Twitter, the platform is choosing to brush big marketing campaigns to the side so that investment can be made into developing their product. However, Periscope is not the only live streaming service available, as established sites such as Facebook begin to join the band wagon.

Find out more on their unusual approach by clicking here.

2. Millennials and mobile: what marketers need to know

Millennials are often a mystery to marketers; they have never experienced a world without the internet and will soon account for one third of all retail spending. But one thing that millennials are not a supporter of is traditional advertising.

According to a new article by Econsultancy, marketers need to catch their attention by appealing to their sense of adventure through curating content that is amusing, exciting and entertaining. Millennials value personalisation with a brand, and with more looking to vloggers or social media sites for inspiration, this is more important than ever.

Click here to find out more.

3. 7 social media platforms that could explode before 2016

During the last decade, social media has experienced exponential growth thanks to the opportunities that it provides to the modern marketer. Forbes has compiled a list of the top 7 platforms that could explode onto the scene this year and threaten the reign of Facebook and Twitter.

The list features fairly new companies such as presentation sharing site, Slideshare, and Hyper, which combine the ideas behind the likes of Instagram and Reddit. However, the inclusion of one of the ‘original’ social networks may surprise you.

Take a look at the full list here.

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#MarketingTitbits – digital qualifications, vloggers, Macmillian’s award

digital-oreovloggers-macmillan-smaller1. Government launches qualifications to meet UK digital marketing needs
The UK Government has now acknowledged the need for digital marketing qualifications in order to fill the growing hole covering a range of jobs such as app developing, multimedia programming and web developing.

In the BIS Small Business Survey from 2012, it was found that only 61% of SMEs had a website, while over half were selling their goods online. It’s predicted that if the remaining businesses had an online presence, annual turnover could reach £18.8 billion per year.

What do you think of this new push to go digital?

To read more, click here.

2. Oreo raises questions on the relationship between brands and vloggers after ASA announcement

Recently, the popularity of vloggers and the benefits they can bring brands has surged, with more and more leaving celebrity endorsement campaigns behind, in favour of vloggers. Vloggers have a special relationship with their sometimes millions of viewers or subscribers, and therefore they make great candidates to promote a product or brand.

But now the ASA are coming forward after Oreo’s ‘lick race’ promotion breached the code, suggesting that it has now become unclear what videos are editorial content and what are advertising communications. A ruling has now stated that advertising must be ‘obviously identifiable’. Will this discourage the relationship between vloggers and brands? Only time will tell.

To see more about the new rules, click here.

3. Macmillan Cancer Support scoops Brand of the Year Award

One of the UK’s most admired cancer charities has picked up the Brand of the Year award at the Marketing Societies annual dinner, fighting off competition from the likes of Baileys, O2 and easyJet.

Macmillian Cancer Support has seen a surge in awareness over the last few years with campaigns like the ‘World’s Biggest Coffee Morning’, which helped revenue jump to £20 million, up from £15 million the previous year. They have now joined the list of Brands of the Year, which contains the likes of Sainsbury’s and Procter and Gamble.

Find out more about Macmillian’s award, by clicking here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Instagram marketing, brand taglines, Google+ changes

instagram-travel-google-smaller1. What brands need to know about Instagram marketing
By 2017, Instagram’s mobile ad revenue is due to quadruple to reach $2.81bn, making its mobile display ad business bigger than both Twitter and Google in the US. There are already more than 500 brand campaigns and Instagram continues to add new features to make the service more appealing to advertisers.

As Tom Richards points out from We Are Social,Instagram already has a parent company in Facebook that has already built up and multi-billion dollar social ad business and can use its learnings to help Instagram grow even faster. Marketers have used the site to sell an image of their brands, in particular fashion and travel sectors.

For more on Instagram’s expansion, click here.

2. Lost in translation: when brand taglines don’t travel

Brand taglines such as KFC and Mcdonald’s are the most recognised in Britain today, but when they cross oceans they can mean something entirely different. We searched the depths of the internet to find the best, or worst.

KFC’s ‘finger licking good’ slogan is known all over the world. But when the fast-food giant hit China, the translation of their tasty slogan wasn’t so appetising. Pepsi experienced a similar problem in China where their slogan ‘come alive you’re with Pepsi’ translated into something completely different. Due to this, sales have dropped significantly since the launch of the campaign.

Click here to find out more.

3. What the Google+ changes mean for marketers

Since its launch in 2011, Google+ has been an integral part of the Google experience, as the search giant used it to unify its disparate services. Google has made it clear that it knows it is never going to compete directly with Facebook for social networking supremacy. However, as Bradley Horowitz explains, Google’s VP of streams and sharing, a Google account will be all you’ll need to share content.

For marketers, the diverging fortunes are a reminder that the most meaningful platforms of tomorrow are equally likely to come from companies nobody has heard of. Either way, marketers still using or interested in Google+ can now treat it as something other than a poor Facebook competitor.

Take a look at more Google+ changes by clicking here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Facebook, Pinterest & Halloween

facebook-pinterest-halloween-final-s1. Facebook brand reputation suffers over beheading videos
In May earlier this year, Facebook released a statement saying that they will ban all graphic content uploaded to the social networking site, until it has been reviewed by them. Despite this, last week Facebook made the decision not to ban a very graphic video of a woman being beheaded. Subsequently, Facebook users  and various groups across society expressed dismay at Facebook’s new stance  – especially given children as young as 13 can have a Facebook page and therefore, access to content on Facebook. Even the Prime Minister, David Cameron, tweeted “It’s irresponsible of Facebook to post beheading videos, especially without a warning. They must explain their actions to worried parents.” In response to the public outcry, Facebook backtracked and altered their policy. Take a look at the full article, click here.

2. Pinterest is now worth $3.8billion

Pinterest is a photo-sharing site first launched in March 2010. Since its inception, it has gone on to become one of social media’s success stories. In December 2011, the site became one of the top 10 largest social media sites according to Hitwise data. In October 2013, Pinterest now has 70 million users and 2.5 billion monthly page views. It is the fastest growing social networking site and has about 500,000 business accounts. Pinterest is now valued at a whopping $3.8 billion. If you’re not already a ‘pinner’, it is well worth taking a look to see if it could help your business. To find out more, here’s a great article from Mashable, click here.

3. Halloween marketing

Halloween is seen by businesses large and small as an opportunity to tap into the population’s increasing fascination with the ghoulish festival . Restaurants, bars and cafes ‘halloween-ify’ their menus with “Scary Sausage and Mash” or “Creepy Coffee”, whilst online retailers offer ‘Spooky’ deals and discounts. Despite the plethora of cynically tenuous attempts to jump on the Halloween bandwagon, the likes of Carling, Booking.com and Lyles have been a bit cleverer. They have gone the extra mile with their Halloween marketing this year. To take a look at the good, the bad and the ghastly of Halloween marketing 2013, click here.

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