Twitter now allows brands to tweet specifically to Canadians
Oreo sent out a tweet Wednesday morning congratulating Team Canada on winning a silver medal in speed skating, complete with a graphic of six cookies speeding around an ice track. In the corner, the brand attached a logo with a maple leaf, the Olympic rings and an Oreo cookie.
The tweet came from @Oreo – the same account that sent the Dunk In The Dark Super Bowl tweet now synonymous with real-time marketing – not @OreoCanada, a dormant account that hasn’t tweet since the brand’s 100th birthday in the summer of 2012.
According to DraftFCB, the agency handling Oreo’s Olympics social campaign, American consumers who follow Oreo won’t see the tweet about Canadian speed skating. Instead, they’ll see content tailored to the American Olympic team, using a feature Twitter calls “tweet delivery by country” that rolled out last October.
The agency said Oreo is the first brand to make use of the new feature in Canada. Tweet delivery by country functions much like Facebook’s Global Pages or other “narrowcasting” features, allowing brands to communicate differently by geography.
The media meets AOL’s David Shing
It’s been a bit of rough week for David Shing, the AOL exec tasked with telling the rest of the company what’s next in digital and social. A regular on the conference circuit (including loads of Canadian stops like the CMDC Conference, a keynote at Canadian Music Week and several of Marketing‘s own events), Shing is well known to the ad industry, but it wasn’t until he appeared on MSNBC that the mainstream media took notice.
The trouble? They don’t like his haircut, mostly. Shing’s look earned him the title of Skrillex of the Valley – via Valleywag – while his habit of hyper-quickly listing buzz terms led Uproxx to label him the “Tech Version Of Derek Zoolander.” Having interviewed Shing many times, I promise he speaks slow(er) off stage and has smart things to say about the web and social… but I will concede he has a silly title.
Anyway, if Valleywag wants an AOL exec to pick on, I’d suggest they lay off on Shing and focus on this one.
BuzzFeed’s Eric Harris talks content
Some of the brightest minds in digital will roll in to Toronto on March 5 and 6 for Dx3, including Eric Harris, executive vice-president of business operations at the super-social gossip/news site BuzzFeed. Harris spoke to Marketing ahead of the conference to offer up some tips on making content as social as the impossible-not-to-click listicles on Buzzfeed. Among the riches: shorter isn’t always better, niche audiences segments can snowball into big numbers and a nod to those doing it right – Virgin Mobile and Geico.
What works on YouTube
Google’s president of Americas operations at Google, Margo Georgiadis, gave Marketing a run down of what works on YouTube – and what doesn’t. Humour and honesty topped Georgiadis’ list of tips for marketers on YouTube, while uploading a shrink wrapped 30-second spot from TV was on the Don’ts list – the Google ad boss said the content that tops YouTube’s Ads Leaderboard is usually born from web, not implanted from another medium.
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The Numbers
The digital think tank L2 has turned its attention to how Instagram is faring in the luxury space for its 2014 Intelligence report on the social network. Taking “prestige” brands like Alexander McQueen, Burberry, Top Shop and Kiehl’s into consideration, L2 found Pinterest may be the best fit in social for high end lifestyle brands, with almost every brand in the space having a presence on the platform.
58%
Instagram users that engage daily (versus 23% on Pinterest)
60,000,000
New monthly active users Instagram acquired last year – a 66% increase over 2012
93%
Prestige brands that have a presence on Instagram
90%
Overall Instagram video shares that occur on its parent site, Facebook
6%
Images prestige brands post per week on average (compared to 0.38 videos)
14%
Prestige brands that integrate Instagram on their brand site
16%
Online adults with a household income over $75K who use Instagram
