Follow Up Fridays: News You May Have Missed

Yahoo Takes a Tumbl?

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is looking to make a $1 billion dollar deal in a bid for the micro blogging site, Tumblr. With Tumblr being one of the last ad revenue frontiers in the social media world, Mayer could take the site to new heights by adding her Yahoo know-how.  The buyout could also bring a young, fresh new crowd to Yahoo. 

Google+ Gets Great Updates

If you are one of the 190 million monthly users still using Google+, you’re in luck. The social site added over 40 new features this week.  Updates range from user interface settings to auto-back up options, changes to the ever popular Google Hangout and a new photo feature simply titled, “Auto Awesome,” that will merge the most awesome parts of your pictures into one.  

RETWEET!

Hey! – a little enthusiasm never hurt anybody.  According to new social media marketing data, adding an exclamation mark to your tweet can garner more re-tweets. However, tweets with exclamation marks received fewer clicks. So it seems folks are simply RTing (that’s Twitter speak for re-tweet) your enthusiasm instead of getting to the bottom of it. 

Apple is Uncle Sam Approved

Due to high demand, the Department of Defense has joined the Apple Age and approved mobile devices running on iOS6 for official government and military use. Hmmm…I wonder if President Obama prefers iMessage over FaceTime?

(Janae Johnson)

Tweets For The Week

If I had to pick a favorite social media outlet, it would be Twitter. Facebook and Instagram are fine and dandy, but nothing beats the constant, up-to-the minute pace of Twitter. There are even days that I watch specific TV shows (reality and award shows are the best) just to “live-tweet” along with my followers and the rest of Twitter’s 140 million users.  Of course your experience on Twitter will vary due to who you choose to follow; but I have cultivated the perfect mix of smart and funny that makes my time on Twitter just that great. So great, that I decided this week to glean all of my news stories straight from Twitter in real time and track them throughout the week. Here were the top stories buzzing on my timeline: 

Monday

Met Gala Madness – Stars flock to New York’s Metropolitan Museum’s annual Met Gala.

High Point: Kim Kardashian finally evades Anna Wintour’s ban and makes her debut on the red carpet, snuggly (smugly?) on the arm of her boyfriend, Kanye West.

Low Point: The pattern of her dress is similar to your grandmother’s couch.  She is then noticeably cropped out of all photos featured on Vouge’s site. Burn!

Tuesday

House of Horrors – Three women, missing for almost 10 years are discovered alive in Cleveland, Ohio.

High Point: Charles Ramsey, reluctant hero and perfect interview-giver , tells the story of how he helped to free Amanda Berry and her daughter from captivity.

Low Point: The slow, unraveling details of a truly horrific story that lead to captor Ariel Castro’s swift arrest.

Dishonorable Mention: Former South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford is back in the house – literally.

Wednesday

GUILTY! – Alleged killer Jodi Arias is found guilty on first degree murder charges by an Arizona jury.

High Point: Justice is served for the family of Travis Alexander who was killed in 2008.

Low Point:  Arias reveals that she would rather face the death penalty than live out her “natural life” in prison.

Dishonorable Mention: The Miami Heat crush the Chicago Bulls with a score of 115-78 in Game 2. The two Bulls fans on my timeline disappeared quickly.

Thursday

Scandal = Thursday’s Nights. If you aren’t watching ABC’s break-out show staring Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, then what are you doing?

High Point: my entire timeline spent all day either discussing Scandal plot theories or talking about people who constantly talk about Scandal.

Low Point: I spent all night narrowly avoiding Scandal spoilers plastered all over my timeline since I am behind a few episodes. Shame on me.

Friday

#TGIF - There was a lot of heavy news this week, so Friday has been pretty lighthearted seeing as everybody is simply happy to have made it through the week.

High Point: Chris Brown’s subtweet about his break-up with Rihanna automatically causes him to be a trending topic. This prompts people to tweet their best “sad” Chris Brown nicknames like, “Chris Frown” or “Woe Bidden,” both of which are very funny.

Low Point: Tons of people realize that Mother’s Day is Sunday and began scrambling for gift ideas!

(Janae Johnson)

Follow Up Friday: News You Might Have Missed

Tagging on Instagram is Here!

Looking for something better to do on Instagram than post selfies and pics of your lunch? Well, now you can tag your pictures.  “Photos of You” is just what it sounds like – all photos that you are tagged in will appear in that tab. I wonder if Instagram tag themselves in a pic of their new logo? 

Close to the Edge

Brands are constantly looking for opportunities to connect with consumers, but at what costs?  Mountain Dew hit a wall with a weird goat-themed commercial created by even weirder rap group member Tyler of Odd Future. Apparently, angry farm animals and caffeine don’t mix.

Breaking News on the Web

Meet Storyful, a new company that specializes on breaking and verifying news on the web. Storyful’s Director of News Services, Clair Wardle explains the process of breaking news in a 140-character, fast paced society, where any and everything counts as news.

Contextual Marketing

How new is the concept of contextual marketing?  It looks like the definition is slowly starting to change based on new markets that have emerged since the mid 70s.

(Janae Johnson)

Follow Up Friday: Things You Might Have Missed

The Tweet That Almost Crashed America

On Tuesday, hackers targeted The Associated Press twitter account and sent out an outrageous tweet claiming that both The White House AND the President were in distress. After a few hectic minutes, the Press Secretary stepped in to calm our fears, but not before the Dow Jones dropped more than 150 points!

Future Fears: 3D Printing vs the Ad Industry

Be prepared to be wowed by 3D printing. The future is here and we are finally able to easily make a three-dimensional solid object from a digital model, all from the comfort of our desktops (or smartphones). But what type of impact will this have on the advertising industry? Only the future will tell.

Mathematica Magic

Thanks to science, we can take an extremely detailed look at just how Facebook data adds up across the board.  Stephen Wolfram, Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, uses mathematica – renowned as the world’s ultimate application for computations – to tackle the very nebulous world of Facebook statistics. 

The Science of Being Noticed

It’s no secret that there is an exact science to getting noticed. From nature to your supermarket shelves, certain colors and shapes stand out. Executive Creative Director Ben Steele and VP-Design Michael Connors of Omnicom Group's Hornall Anderson, a Seattle-based design agency that works with some of your favorite brands, talk about what makes certain product packaging pop – and trust me, it’s no coincidence.

(Janae Johnson)

Coke vs Pepsi?

Imagine ducking into Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine to see if you prefer Coke over Pepsi.

That’s the gist of research conducted by Dr. Read Montague of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, whose work centers on human social cognition, decision-making and willful choice with a goal of understanding the detailed underlying neurobiology of these functions in health and disease.

His team uses “functional MRI,” or fMRI, to see real-time images of the brain while doing tasks. The same brain that makes purchasing decision.

Without getting into the scientific gobbledygook – after all, I got into public relations and advertising to avoid math, though I love science – his team conducted an experiment showing that, no matter what subjects were given, they prefer Coke over Pepsi.

Has it to do with Coke’s indelible imprint on the brain thanks to multi-billions of dollars of marketing over the years? Perhaps. The brain works in mysterious ways.

I was honored to appear with this scientist and pioneer on neuro-marketing on a recent hour-long public radio program, Virginia Conversations. The topic was how the human brain responds to advertising.

It’s a fascinating topic and a program worth listening to.

So does this mean fMRI will replace focus groups, intuition and metrics to craft advertising campaigns? Should ad agencies plan to install these to test messages?

Not so fast. While the scientific research certainly raises issues about how the brain reacts to marketing messages, the findings won’t easily replace research-driven advertising to uncover the psychographics, habits and preferences of the target audience in a digital world.

While science will continue to provide new insights at the end it’s about research, creativity and measurement to truly see if a message makes it to the brain.

(Thomas Becher)