The world of marketing is constantly evolving as brands get more creative with new technology, platforms and ideas. Every company wants its “Oreo moment” or come up with the next big thing. We think it’s important to keep up with the latest and greatest happenings in the industry, beyond buzzwords. Here’s what we’re hooked on this week.
Bolt
This week we met Bolt, Instagram’s “one-tap” messaging app that launched in New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa (65 percent of Instagram’s users are overseas). Unlike Snapchat, Bolt puts friend icons and send buttons on the same screen, and users can store up to 20 friends.
Why we’re hooked:
Will this compete with Snapchat or other popular applications like Taptalk? As different messaging services become more popular. Brands and marketers have to understand how to cater content to those preferences.
ATM: Automated Thanking Machines
It’s easy to love brands that surprise us and go above and beyond for customers, which is exactly what TD Bank recently did in five Canada locations to reward selected customers. The video below showcases the different prizes unsuspecting customers received when using a TD ATM.
Why we’re hooked:
“The best marketing doesn’t look like marketing.” TD’s message is that it values its customers, and the “random act of kindness” nature of this campaign is what makes it a viral hit. As a marketer, it’s tough to predict whether a campaign or promotion will go viral or not (and whether the money is worth it!), but for TD, this was definitely worth the risk.
Twitter Interactions
Twitter launched a redesign late last year, moving the favorite, retweet and reply icons directly into a user’s Twitter feed, rather than going into an individual tweet to perform any of those actions. Data from ad tech firm Socialbakers shows that move had a huge impact on Twitter engagement and interactions – the average number of interactions per month jumped from 17,098 in June 2013 to 27,653 in June 2014.
Why we’re hooked:
Interactions like retweets, favorites and replies are one of the key metrics for measuring a post or account’s reach. Increased engagement means increased reach and visibility for brands, which falls in line with Twitter’s transformation for advertisers as it rolls out new features like embedded “buy now” buttons.
