We are all familiar with the selfie. We do it all the time and we actually did it for years. The word “selfie” is traced back to an Australian ABC Internet forum on September 13, 2002.
Eleven years later in 2013 “selfie” is added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Official Oxford Definition: A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website
Selfie have become so popular that companies are taking notice and using them part of campaigns. S&T bank, located in the Pittsburgh, PA area recently began a campaign focusing on selfies. S&T is targeting students for its Smart Start Student Banking Solutions. It is quite cool and if I could have would have taken a picture of the billboard in the area advertising the contest. Traditional and emerging media can be used together after all.
If you didn’t know this past 4th of July, was the 38th year of the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular. I never even knew Macy’s did this. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing for me personally, but it made me think about how the event is promoted via emerging media. It makes sense for anyone who follows or likes the Macy’s pages, but what about those who do not or not religiously. Where else in the world of emerging media would you have found this out? Looking through all social networks, Macy’s tweeted and posted to Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest a few times the day of, but not much before. Macy’s did however issued a press release on June 10th, which got plenty of news to talk about it for them. So does that mean an event like this for Macy’s is just something a press release is good enough for? I am a Millennial and to me I do not read the news or watch the news all that much. Maybe I really wanted to watch the live stream provided by NBC, but couldn’t because of this promotional strategy. I understand is not the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, but I didn’t even go out to view fireworks and I could have possible viewed on my computer as I enjoyed a quieter evening on the couch. Maybe I am just jealous because news sources stated how New Yorkers and some from New Jersey enjoyed a great display and enjoyed the concert that accompanied it, unlike how you hear the new describe how people around the country enjoy the entertainment they can watch from home on New Year’s Eve. This is all a bit strange to me so if anyone can enlighten me that would be great.
Here’s another instance of using Facebook to tell a story. Once again, the source is an archive, and the subject is historical biography.
Donnelyn Curtis, the director of research collections and services at the University of Nevada at Reno, created Facebook profiles for Mr. McDonald and his wife, Leola Lewis, to give students a glimpse of university life during the couple’s college days. Ms. Lewis graduated in 1913, and Mr. McDonald earned his degree in mechanical engineering two years later.
Some practical background and a motive:
With approval from Mr. McDonald’s granddaughter, Peggy McDonald, Ms. Curtis said she’s using archival material for a history project designed to appeal to a wider audience than the typical patrons of special collections.
“We’re just trying to help history come alive a little bit for students,” she said. At first, only extended family members bothered to “friend” with the pair’s profiles…
There is not a better addition to my blog than to talk about #shareacoke and it fits well with my most recent post. Share a coke has returned in 2014 and it seems to be even better than last time. The original Share a Coke campaign originated in Australia in 2011 and was such a success it was quickly rolled out across the globe. The idea was simple enough and that was to put 150 of Australia’s most popular names on Coca Cola bottles/cans (Coca Cola, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero).
#ShareaCoke with Jackie (6/24/14)
My boyfriend actually bought me a #shareacoke special edition bottle simply because it had my name on it. He was not lucky enough to find his own name and I am trying to locate one for him now. This has really created a movement just like how Lucie Austin, Marketing Director for Coca Cola South Pacific, stated at the time of the Australian launch that, “We are using the power of the first name in a playful and social way to remind people of those in their lives they may have lost touch with, or have yet to connect with. This is the first time in its 125-year history that Coca-Colahas made such a major change to it packaging and the limited edition bottles are expected to fly off shelves as people search for their friend’s names.” Even though we did not loose touch or need to reconnect it created a special memory for us that I am sure at some point will brought up again.
The campaign has its very own website, www.shareacoke.com. You should really check it out and the video below 🙂
In a world that is fueled with wanting everything here and now we are also a world that wants to reach out with others making people smile and have a better life. We are all familiar with the “Buy One, Give One” philosophy and mission of TOMS, but do you remember the Hilltop Re-Imagined Campaign Google did for Coca Cola a few years back? So how was this all re-imagined? Back in 1971, Coca Cola aired the famous Hilltop commercial, in which people gather on a hilltop and sing about how they’d “Like to buy the world a Coke.” Take a quick look at the ad.
Google inspired by the commercial and how Coca Cola always wants people to have fun and “open happiness” thought that the two could be put together giving people anywhere in the world to buy a coke for anyone. This use of mobile advertising actually won the first ever Mobile Lions Grand Prix at the Cannes ad festival (aka the highest mobile ad honor ever). This is why it was so successful and just really cool.
The mobile advertising used is truly ingenious and really gives you the ability to reach out to others across the globe. I have to say that I was really impressed with this and wish the app was still available to use since I just discovered it. There are other ways to bring people together and there is a lesson to learn from the olden days when a personal touch went a long. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO shared so many things at the Cannes Lions festival this year. It is worth making that extra effort just as Google did for Coca Cola. We need to go back to the days when a hand shake meant something and stores cared about every customer that walked through the door.
Social Media gives us all the ability to share and say whatever we want, whenever we want. We do not need permission that is for sure. Sharing/retweeting/liking is basically a currency in way for social media. It is how we may determine to comment and share how we feel about the post. And then there are the posts we create ourselves, hoping someone will share/retweet/like. We all want to make some impact for the day on social media and some will go to any lengths to do so. But is it really worth it? What do we get from sharing online?
Does it pass the Facebook test?/Would you want to see on your Facebook New Feed?
Would you email it to a friend?
There are even more appropriate times to share and it changes for each social media. Facebook is better suited to have a post at the end of week. Tweeting at off-peak times, like the weekend can help yours stand out. Google+ users normally are on during weekdays in the late morning before noon. You can be successful on Pinterest on the weekend and for LinkedIn before and after work is more appropriate.
There is even a better way to share your own story. Those of us in the IMC field or studying it like myself understand the importance of a good story. We work for a client and want to show them in the best way possible, but we have to remember we are our own client as well. This can be easily done with creating a powerful bio, developing your own voice, being strategic about sharing content, and studying your audience. For anything that has to do with what we create, we must do so carefully and strategically.
Take a look this presentation by Prof. Dawn Edmiston at WVU’s INTEGRATE 2012 conference. It can surely make you appreciate how people perceive you online.
From paintings on the wall in Lascaux, to the Gutenberg printing press, the ballpoint pen, telegraph, telephone, email, and now social media. All of these examples are part of our technology advancements in communication. We all had to be educated about each and everyone and for those that lived through so much change took it either with great anticipation or dreaded the next year. If any of you watch Downton Abbey, you are taken back to the early 20th century when new inventions were sneaking their way into every part of people’s lives. The Dowager Countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith), the grandmother in the television show, is very leery of the new technologies and my favorite is when the telephone is installed and her feelings of it when trying to use it herself.
We all have the experience similar to the Dowager when something new comes along. How we overcome the challenges of a change in our social interaction is to educate ourselves and with practice. Higher education as taken a notice to the need to educate those looking to make emerging media a career and you can now get a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in the subject. Champlain College offers a Master’s degree, while Boston University offers the Bachelor’s. Non-traditional schools offer a program as well.
And it’s not all about teaching for a professional career. Students expect to use such means in the classroom. Just as Gardner Campbell, director of professional development and innovative initiatives at Virginia Tech shares, “People need a way to be able to think about and participate in this enormously complex and rapidly changing computing environment, a way that’s going to be productive, a way that’s going to be satisfying, a way that’s going to be inspiring.” Emerging Media plays an important role in the classroom for sure.
Business professionals are not excluded from learning and using emerging media. A business must be a social business in this world. Marketers must make sure they are keeping up with this social concept and for those that have taken on the task should know how to do it correctly to keep up with it. They must do the following according to Gretchen Fox: 1) Impermanence, 2) Real Time, 3) Combining Tech with Real World, and 4) Bio Data.
We all will become thoroughly educated as emerging media evolves. We just hope we can keep up with it.
Where we come from in the United States plays a major role in how we think, our daily tasks, and the recreational activities we partake in. What also determines these things is our ethnicity. Though I focus on the recreational activity of social media, ethnicity plays a role in many other recreational activities as well. Social media is the way we connect with one another across the street, town, state, country, and world. There is a reason why my family created an events page on Facebook about our family reunion this summer. Information is easily accessible to those who use it and people can better communicate, asking questions, commenting, or sharing the last photo of my Grandma and all her siblings at the last reunion about two decades ago. I am safe in sharing that my family is made up primarily of western european discount, but many extended family members are half latino. Though it is not a science to determine why some ethnicities prefer one social media over the other, the numbers cannot be ignored. The Pew Study found some interesting tendencies of blacks, hispanics, and whites.
Some of the highlights:
Black internet users are more likely to be on Twitter than any other group.
Blacks and Latinos also over-index on Instagram.
Latinos over-index on Tumblr.
Pinterest is the whitest social platform.
Facebook is the free for all.
Based on such information, businesses and the like, such as political campaigns used social media to best get their message to the ethnicity of their choice. In general, any demographic information is used to determine the best social media medium. Social media is a part of our daily lives and it’s not going anywhere. It makes us who we are now and shapes us just a much as our home towns. Check out this video to see just how much social media is part of our lives – no matter what ethnicity you are.
Emerging media is truly at its greatest when hashtags (#) are being used. Events are shared and trending topics can change at the drop of a hat. There is a hashtag for just about anything and everything. News stations, TV shows, teams, organizations, a single person and many other entities have created hashtags to distinguish online conversation topics. The hashtag has enabled the public to constantly post/share/tweet their feelings about anything or anyone. It is an immediate interaction with millions by a single click and influences the products and services of companies globally. A single negative comment with a hashtag associated with a company can have catastrophic consequences for that company or organization. #MyNYPD is no exception. The opposite can happen in a positive way as well. If someone posts #BringBackOurGirls, you know it is in response to the kidnapping of girls in Nigeria, in the hopes of their safe return to their families. People are influenced by what is associated with a hashtag and movements can be started to bring about change and/or inform the world about events occurring everywhere.
Twitter and Facebook made all the difference for those wanting to inform the world about what was really happening in Ukraine. Just take a look at theses graphs to see the impact regarding the Ukrainian protests.
(Facebook activity on public pages related to Ukrainian protests)
(Ukrainian protests tweets by language)
(Ukrainian protests and creation of new twitter accounts)
So we became informed about the protests in Ukraine overnight, but hashtags and emerging media can make you dislike a product/service/organization. Here are few mess ups companies created for themselves making people think twice about purchasing something from them ever again. A hashtag turned negative is a “hashtag.” McDonald’s had this happen to them with #McDStories. McDonalds was hoping that the hashtag would inspire heart-warming stories about Happy Meals. Instead, it attracted snarky tweeps and McDonald’s detractors who turned it into a #bashtag to share their #McDHorrorStories.
If you came across these tweets, you really may not want to be patron of the Golden Arches ever again. Hashtags have a very interesting role in the emerging media world and the influence they have on the day to day lives of people is surely something to talk about. #hashtaginfluence
IMC: Emerging Media what is it Good for? 