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Introducing: Facebook Canvas

Facebook Canvas is a new interface for advertisers to create engaging content that users can swipe up, down, left or right for an immersive brand experience. 

The interface is built for mobile only at this stage through Facebook and will essentially be a microsite of content when users click on your ad.

An example of this is shown in the video below.

A limited number of brands have used Canvas already with no results released to the public just yet. Access to use Canvas is being rolled out to businesses who wish to sign up across the next few months (Jan 2016 onwards). 

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Social VR is alive and thriving

If you frequent YouTube, you would have noticed many videos using the new 360 VR video technology. If you haven’t seen or heard about it just yet, watch the video above for a cute video of what it would look like to be in the middle of a puppy playpen. For best results, view on your mobile phone and physically move your phone and yourself around to view the whole playpen.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented his views on the future of Social VR and Samsung’s Unpacked conference this week, and made sure every single audience member had access to a phone to experience VR as shown below.

Zuckerberg explained that since the introduction of VR video technology, more than 20,000 videos have been uploaded with 360 VR technology.

With Facebook’s investment in the Oculus Rift and Google’s Cardboard, it’s safe to say at home and commercial VR technology will stick around for some time yet. 

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Print isn’t dead!

This print campaign from Canada shows that you don’t need a crash hot digital strategy and social media posts to go viral.

In a nut shell, the campaign shows with a flash of your phone messages of love for LGBTQ community members. 

The technology behind it hasn’t been confirmed but is a cool idea to get people to snap pictures of your poster and spread the word for you.

My generation Gen Y and Gen Z are resilient to people telling them what they should do to promote things but if you give them share-worthy content, they will do the work for you.

The lesson behind this is to concentrate on producing content that is worth talking about. In most cases content that is smart, witty, shocking or inclusive are shared more.

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If you’ve ever wondered what not to do when it comes to getting “revenge” on a frustrating client, this is the story for you.

The University of Queensland (UQ) launched their campaign to attract recently graduated students to enrol. UQ is coincidentally where I did my Japanese studies so I’m well aware of how they position themselves in the market. UQ is quite a prestigious university where it is known for its science and physics degrees.

In their latest ad campaign, they adopted the tagline “Make change” teamed with an inspiration music track as well as features of current students around their beautiful campus. You can watch the original TVC here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5sZXB-XaZM

Recently, the campaign came under fire from the media when students noticed a phallic object on the bus stop ads:

No one knows why it has appeared in the posters but it may be due to a shaky relationship between agency and client. 

As a result, the bus stop posters were pulled from all locations and replaced with posters without our phallic friend.

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New App Review 

What | Live video streaming application

Think | Live stream Snapchat

Tagline | Explore the world from someone else’s eyes

Why | Making mobile streaming easy

Purpose | The idea is to discover the world through someone else’s eyes. What if you could see through the eyes of a protestor in Ukraine? Or watch the sunrise from a hot air balloon in Cappadocia?

How it is actually used currently | Streaming paid concerts, as a medium to ask celebrities questions, live stream gym sessions

Who | Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jimmy Fallon, Tony Hawk, Channing Tatum, Jamie Oliver, Ringo Starr etc

Fact Facts Launched 26 March 2015 Available on iOS and Android Made by Twitter in response to Meerkat (similar app to Periscope)

Interface You gain profile points when people double tap, AKA “heart your stream” You can give a stream as many hearts as you like Comments/questions from viewers appear in the left hand corner

Verdict | As far as I’m concerned it’s too early to tell. The video I linked for Melbourne is a great idea but it will be interesting to see if it takes off. I can see this being used for experiences but finding a way to integrate it seamlessly into campaigns 

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What: Out of home advertising

Where: Mumbai, India

Agency: Everest Brand Solutions Pvt Ltd

Client: Cancer Patients Aid Association

For those who still smoke in late 2015, the number of areas you can smoke in public are diminishing. In some countries, smoking rooms are available in city and suburban areas to smoke. The Cancer Patients Aid Association in India took a very emotional and powerful stance on the inevitable effects of smoking with a photograph of your grave in the picture above. 

Persons smoking in this room will look up and see various people, incuding the pastor above them from below ground level. The creative in this ad is clear, sends a very strong message and will hopefully stir a response among smokers in India.

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Clever Timing For those people getting up early to go for a run or, if you're me begrudgingly getting out of bed to go to bootcamp, this Blackmores ad is perfectly placed and located for those needing tjat extra oomph to leave their warm covers and go for a run/walk/bike ride. It's simple, the message and call to action is clear.

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There's not much deep analysis needed for this ad. It's just a cute and clever way of showing IKEA's kitchen designs. Enjoy!

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New Facebook Advertising Features

Businesses can now feature the “message now” button in sponsored posts and advertisements. Ad viewers are now able to directly message the business with questions about the particular ad, campaign or discounts on offer. 

This feature ties in with the new responsiveness tool on Business pages, that tells you how responsive the Customer Service team is.

Facebook takes into account two things to rate the page-

The percentage of messages responded to

Response time to each message

Which looks like this on the page:

If your page is deemed as very responsive according to Facebook, your page will look like the following:

To achieve this, the page has to:

Respond to 90% of the messages and

Maintains a median response time of 5 minutes for all replies sent

So what does this mean for advertisers, marketers and the like?

It means that agencies now have a tool to measure their efforts on providing support for customers. For brands, it is a great tool to show how responsive their staff are and set tangible targets to improve. For customers it means that you know before sending that strongly worded (and maybe slightly abusive) message whether the business is likely to respond.

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Rebrand Alert!

Brumby’s have moved away from their iconic maroon and yellow colours that have treated them well for the past decade. The new Brumby’s brand uses a colour I never thought a bakery should choose: green.

Why shouldn’t they choose green?  Simple, when I buy my bread, I don’t particularly fancy mould on my bread. 

While I’m sure their branding agency have good reasons to go with green, fresh, farm fresh etc, I wouldn’t recommend to use it for a bakery.

Other brand such as Woolworths have green because you would hope that the food you’re buying from them is fresh. They reinforce this with their slogan “fresh food people.” It just makes sense.

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Bigger smartphones = bigger mobile advertising budgets

Top of the range smartphones like the S6 edge (pictured) have larger touch-enabled areas which makes viewing content easier for people who spend most of their time on their phone.

So why is it that while our phones get bigger, mobile advertising budgets aren’t increasing too? With the constant evolution of digital and social, it can be difficult to keep up with how people consume media and adjust campaigns appropriately. 

The functionality and speed of mobile devices will only continue to improve over time with better resolution screens, processing speeds, camera quality and improved functionality such as NFC-powered payments (Pay Wave) and barcodes that streamline every day life.

Advertising budgets should start to reflect this shift towards mobile sooner rather than later. Consumers aren’t as responsive to digital display ads anymore, which means that creative, interactive, value-adding content is more important than ever. Advertisers need to shift away from one-sided conversations (ads) and more two-way interactions outside of display ads that are more than incentivised app downloads.

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According to Econsultancy, Google has announced that all components on websites “not central to a webpage” will be paused for Chrome users. 

At this stage, what is considered as “not central” has not been clarified by Google. However, content which is considered as not central to the webpage can be resumed when clicked on.

Digital marketers from around the globe are worried that flash digital display ads will be part of what is automatically paused in the new Chrome update in September this year.

Most Chrome users use some form of an ad blocking app, already reducing the potential number of ad impressions. In Australia, 48% of the population use Chrome but the number of users who already use ad-blocking apps is not disclosed, significantly reducing the potential impressions for digital display ads.

From a digital marketing perspective this isn’t worth stressing over until it is confirmed by Google. In reality if your digital campaign is reliant on digital display placement for success, you’re not making the most of your budget.

TL;DR New Google Chrome update may pause flash ads not central to websites in September. Details are not 100% confirmed but be wary when planning long-term digital marketing campaigns using digital display this year. 

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In a world where we are consuming digital media on an average of 8-12 hours a day, newspapers are slowing dying each and every day.

For news.com.au who is purely a digital news source embraces their platform with this new TVC and a series of bus station ads. The ad copy ranges from one-liners like the below and the generic campaign message of “The news in colour”.

Props to Bohemia Group for the clever campaign. 

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In a study conducted by Meredith, 2500 women were interviewed on their preferred devices to access the internet.

If you are to take away anything from this research it’s this:

80% of the women interviewed access social media to look at their own timelines/profiles.

It’s obvious women are still subconscious of their image and this has now extended to their social media profiles. In particular women will broadcast their information on Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram. This is an American study but the 5 most common social media channels in Australia for both genders are Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, WordPress and Instagram.

Marketers will need to post content that is share-worthy enough to be a positive reflection on a woman’s social media presence. Brands such as Dove and Always’ ads that are pro-women are a fantastic example of this.

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Taco Bell is calling McDonald's a disgusting communist pig, but McDonald's doesn't care, because McDonald's still has the Big Mac. And now, the Big Mac is getting its very first lifestyle collection of merchandise for those who want something a little more meaty than what Martha Stewart can deliver.

I did have a good laugh while reading this! The funniest thing is that people will actually buy this. It will be interesting to see how the McDonald’s brand develops with this addition. Maybe it will be the stepping stone to a rollout of McDonald’s merchandise to fight back with people cutting back on unhealthy food?

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So how are you really?

This is an Australian campaign that will measure at least 3 times a day how you are feeling with an app available to Apple and Android users. 

The app will send you push notifications 3 times a day and ask you how you are feeling from Happy, Sad, Anxious, Angry, Powerful and Peaceful.

The campaign aims to shed a light on the mental health of Australians and to create awareness of mental health support services in Australia.

In the app you can see how people are feeling around you as well as how Australia is feeling!

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Advertising in different countries is tailored to their idea of aesthetics, morals and ethics.

A good example of different aesthetics, morals and ethics is the Tesla website where the main banner on each countries’ homepage is different.

I’ve looked at UK, Japan, China, Canada, Australia and the Global (USA) sites. All of the cars in the image are red, except for China. I always thought red was a sign of power in China but it turns out red means good fortune and joy. The colour white represents gold and means brightness, purity and fulfilment according to Wiki.

Tesla China 

In each of the photos the background is different and I assume it is picked based upon the aesthetics associated with driving luxury vehicles. Since I’m Australian I’ll happily explain that in my eyes going for a cruise next to the ocean is one of the greatest things and I’ll sometimes take the long way to get somewhere so I can take the ocean road. It’s not like I can go for a lovely drive around snow capped mountains or grassy rolling hills so the ocean is the best on offer.

Tesla Australia

I was surprised at Canada’s in particular because I thought it would feature beautiful snow capped mountains or at least a dense forest image. Nope. It’s just open countryside. The other one that surprised me was the UK photo. Sure I understand there’s a lot of urban areas and some countryside but I found the photo to be really unflattering. I wouldn’t particularly want to take my Tesla Model S for a spin through stretches of dried, brown grass. I wonder what the research behind that was!

Tesla Canada

Tesla UK 

Tesla Japan

Tesla Global (USA)