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.