Honda uploaded a very interactive video today. This ad is a work of pure genius. This ad takes you through two sides of a story at the same time. How it works is the video is an interactive video that allows the viewer to control the content by just holding down the “R” key on their keyboard. See the whole ad here –>

https://www.youtube.com/user/HondaVideo

This ties into Honda trying to change the perception people may have of their Civic model. The message they are trying to get across is that there is a “vanilla” version of the civic driver who takes their kids to school, but at the same time you can lead a double life of excitement with the Civic.

Photo taken from Honda Website.

This could be a direct response to the recent ad that Toyota came out that has the exact same message. This ad also emphasized that adults can be cool and drive the Toyota Camry.

Obviously the Honda interactive experience was more engaging and effective compared the Toyota ad that did the same things. Having the viewer hold down the “R” key is an effective means to get people to remember the car itself and the model name. The interactive video makes viewers want to stay and watch the full video itself and also re-watch the video to see the whole other side of the story.

Snapchat just announced their partnership with a payment service called Square. This partnership will allow people to transfer money over the popular app, Snapchat. While it seems like they are trying to leverage associations of instant and immediate, will Snapcash actually work?

Photo taken from Google Images.

Snapchat could make this work only if security issues were completely addressed. The biggest concern people have would be making sure their money gets to the right person and the possibility of someone hacking into their account is completely eliminated. The ability to instantaneously transfer money to someone hassle free may be enticing, but the risk of having your money stolen is the behemoth that Snapchat needs to overcome.

In my mind, no matter what Snapchat does, people will not be able to trust this app with their money. If people already make mistakes about sending the right snap to the right person, what more can people trust this app with their money.

Overall this business plan has the greater potential to fail miserably than to make Snapchat successful. The Snapchat app itself makes pictures disappear after a preset amount of time, how can people trust Snapchat to not make their money disappear either?

The full article can be viewed here.

Bill Cosby’s management team decided to have a website to give people the ability to make cheeky memes of Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby had rape allegations against him back in 2006 which ended up being the main focus of the memes people created. This specific instance is an example of what happens when consumer generated content goes wrong.

There were no memes created with cheeky one-liners that Bill Cosby said. The majority of the memes that people created were focused around implying that Bill Cosby engaged in sexual assault.

Consumer generated content can quickly spread like wildfire, but in this instance the content generated was not the result Cosby’s management team intended.

This just shows that consumer generated content is not always the best way to go. The management team had no control of what people decided to do with the meme creator nor could they have foreseen the rape allegations resurfacing. Not only did the meme creator go horribly wrong, Cosby had to cancel a scheduled interview due to all the media attention directed towards his past allegations.

Photo taken from Google Images.

Relinquishing the control to the Internet is something to be thought out thoroughly because the possible outcome can have strong consequences. The management team definitely did not consider every possible outcome before deciding to release this meme creator, which has greatly hurt Cosby’s image and brand.

Kim Kardashian is a scandalous celebrity to start with. The world is captivated by the random things she does. Kim Kardashian has pulled another stunt yet again. She released a scantily clad magazine cover on November 12, which shows full frontal nudity as well as a shot of her nude from the back. This picture itself has hit 6.6 million views within days. Furthermore, Kanye West tweeted one of the magazine spread’s photos which got 76,000 retweets and 85,000 favourites. This overwhelming amount of views, retweets and attention derived from a few photos. If you want to see the full photo, typing in Kim Kardashian will surely pull it up immediately.

At the beginning of the year, a topic in my Commerce Internet Marketing class that was brought up was “Is all kinds publicity good?” From this sheer amount of sharing of this photo has made it indeed “break the Internet” as Kim intended it to, but at what cost?

Kim already has a bad reputation to start with, owing much of her fame to sheer luck and lack of talent as viewed by most of the world. Stripping down and consenting to having her naked body plastered all over the magazine seems a bit much just to create some buzz. Not only does this wreck her reputation, people will take her less seriously than they already did before. As much as she did receive MASSIVE attention from the media and the online world in the end, this attention does not add any value to people’s perception of her. For the most part people are not surprised she pulled another “stunt” like this one.

When it comes to creating content and responding to content Taylor Swift is the queen of connecting with her fans. Taylor Swift uploaded snippets of her lyrics handwritten in various locations for thirteen straight days to promote her upcoming album release. Her Tumblr is scattered with her responses to fans that have uploaded videos and pictures and questions. Finally her latest stunt has been surprising numerous fans with massive early Christmas presents.

These Christmas presents were personally hand picked by Taylor and each present had many components attached with handwritten personalized notes. She took it one step further to personally deliver a children’s Mercedes car to one lucky fan’s son. Her ability to continually make the effort to surprise fans is incredible.

Photo taken from Taylor Swift’s Tumblr Account.

It is unheard of to find another celebrity who takes the effort to connect with her fans on such a personal manner through the Internet. In the end, it only increases her popularity as fans share about their surprise Christmas presents from Taylor Swift. They continue to generate content about Taylor themselves. In this case, there is no interview or magazine cover shoot that Taylor can do to create as much conversation as her ability to generate buzz with her early Christmas presents.

Photo taken from Google Images.

Celebrities have major influential power on social media. Surprisingly enough, Taylor Swift engaged in social monitoring of her own when she decided she would host 1989 Secret Sessions.

Taylor Swift hosted these 1989 Secret Sessions for her fans on three separate occasions. In these sessions Taylor played her full album 1989 a month ahead of the release date.

Taylor Swift went above and beyond most celebrities to connect with her fans. She scoured Instagram, the Internet, Twitter and Taylor Swift fan sites to hand pick the most well deserved fans. She listened in on conversations about her, monitored the comments on her Instagram account and Twitter.

It is a big deal to have a celebrity hand pick 267 lucky fans to attend her secret sessions. I give kudos to Taylor Swift for her dedication to monitor her fans for months to make sure she selected the true fans to come listen to her album.

To see what went down in the 1989 Secret Sessions click here.

Photo taken from Google Images.

Left and right companies are creating apps and going digital. It’s just an accepted way of doing business now. Making sure your company is digital is now a point of parity of doing business and customers expect businesses to be online and possible have an app.

A company that has been behind on this trend is 3M the maker of Post-it Notes. They have officially released a Post-it Note app for the iPhone. This app allows you to take pictures of your Post-it Notes and stores these handwritten notes in your phone.

Photo taken from Google Images.

While this idea fits in with the brand image, the concept of the app fails to thrill. Many productivity apps have come out allowing users to write into their phones their thoughts and ideas. Apps such as Evernote help students and professionals keep track of their notes and ideas.

In this digital age, it seems redundant for 3M to create an app just so you can transfer your handwritten post-it notes into your phone or computer. It seems a whole lot easier to enter your information into your phone in the first place if you knew you would want a soft copy of the information.

So is this Post-it Note app a waste of 3M’s resources? Most likely so, they should have just stuck to paper.

Social media has the power to influence many and spread the news like wildfire. The influence of social media is evident when Instagram was disabled in Mainland China on Sunday. Read more about the story here.

The thinking behind disabling Instagram is to stop the hashtag #OccupyCentral from spreading. This is the main hashtag associated with the protests happening in Hong Kong.

But does disabling Instagram really do the trick? If anything I would think that it draws more attention to the issue. Those in Mainland China could be unaware of the events happening in Hong Kong. With Instagram being disabled, this brings more attention to people. They might investigate the cause of Instagram being disabled, search the Internet and see the true reason behind this act.

So what do you think? Did disabling Instagram only draw more attention to the protests?

Jennifer Lopez released her ‘Booty’ music video last Thursday, September 18, 2014 that has already wracked up more than 29 million views already.

Photo taken from Google Images.

For a shallowly written song which has one theme, to ‘shake your big booty’ I question what is up with pop cultures’ obsession with booties?

Photo taken from Google Images.

It possibly could be attributed to Miley Cyrus and her invention of ‘twerking’ that has let to this massive theme in today’s culture. Other artists such as Nicki Minaj, have also recently released a song ‘Anaconda’ with the whole music video and song centered around booties.

While these music videos may be entertaining and edgy, I fail to see the lure. These are women who are just establishing that they arenothing more than overly sexualized beings who exist for the sole purpose of pleasing men.

Haven’t woman made significant advances within the world? Woman can vote, get an education and now play important roles within the corporate world. Why in the world are these artists belittling the advancement women have made?

This Jennifer Lopez music video was literally 4 minutes of butt shots. How is this popular? We all have a butt, it’s not something that we’ve never seen before, so I fail to see how watching people shake their booty can be THAT entertaining. I know it seems edgy and provocative, but why as a human race have we not advanced more than this?

Photo taken from Google Images.

Normally the words free would have a stampede of crowds coming in.

This was not the case for U2, when Apple decided to gift 500 Million of their ITunes users the U2 album Songs of Innocence this past week. The reaction to this gift was less than positive. Most users were surprised and there were an overwhelming amount of negative feedback on social media. A few examples of people’s reactions to the U2 album were “How do I delete this U2 trash off my phone” and “Thanks iTunes but I actually really don’t want this U2 album. Have it back.” There was so much negative feedback that Apple had to create a new troubleshooting page to help Apple users delete this album off their phones. More on this topic here.

Why did this digital marketing campaign go so horribly wrong?

There was a complete lack of consent.

The biggest issue that arose was that iTunes users had the Songs of Innocence album forced onto their accounts without their awareness.

Customers demand their privacy more than ever. This article The New Anti-Spam Law in Canada talks about the new anti-spams law in place to protect customers from commercial emails. The new law stresses that companies obtain consent from customers before they are able to send them emails.

While iTunes did not spam their customers with emails, the forced album download took it a step further.  I myself was taken aback when I found this album already in my phone. Not only was this campaign poorly received, the lack of positive feedback can imply that it was a complete waste of resources.

Photo taken from Google Images.

The effort and work U2 put into producing this album was wasted. The quality of the music is completely overshadowed by this marketing stunt. The intent of this campaign was to hopefully spread U2’s music to increase their popularity but instead people will only remember the U2 album Songs of Innocence being automatically downloaded on their iPhones.