Is Facebook losing its cool? The answer is a debatable topic in the news today. Last week, I talked about how Facebook is losing its grasp over teenagers, which is seen as a potential disaster because teenagers are the demographic that spot the up in coming trends. However, maybe that’s not the case. Just because teens are quick to spot new trends, doesn’t mean that they are able to predict which ones will be profitable in the long run.

This video aired today on Yahoo! Finance about the reasons why Snapchat turned down Facebook’s 3 billion dollar deal and whether it was because Facebook had lost its “cool”. Aaron Task argues that “What’s cool with kids doesn’t always turn out to be a great business. Teenagers are notoriously fickle”. No offense to teenagers.

In my opinion…Snapchat was the bees knees last year. I was obsessed. Thanks to that app, I nearly went over my data limit each month because I felt the need to Snapchat everything I did. However, after several months it lost its appeal and my friends and I rarely use it anymore. Look at other apps such as Words with Friends and Draw Something- all were entertaining, sold for billions of dollars and all are rarely downloaded today. Snapchat should have sold out while they still had the popularity because technology is changing on the daily and what is cool now, isn’t necessarily going to be cool tomorrow.

In conclusion: Facebook might be losing its cool but so is Snapchat. Your thoughts?

Hats off to Volvo for another outrageous, epic viral video. If you haven’t see this video you are missing out!

With nearly 7.7 million YouTube hits, the publicity surrounding Volvo’s latest video featuring Claude Van Damme, aka “Muscles from Brussels”, is definitely a hit. However…are the plethora of views on YouTube actually going to help the company? Marketing experts say “Absolutely!”.

In Volvo’s case, the extensive publicity surrounding the new Van Damme ad, will not only increase the value of Volvo’s brand but it will also increase truck sales. Unfortunately, not all viral videos are this lucky. Some companies try so hard to create an astonishing video in the hopes that it goes viral but they forget to relate the content to their brand. Without the connection between the content and the brand, people will remember and talk about the outrageous stunt but they will forget to recall the company that made it.

Volvo scored BIG with this ad. Advertising columnists Barbara Lippert says “This is completely unique. It’s an incredible human way to show the equilibrium of the steering of the truck”, adding that “anyone who knows anyone who drives a truck or owns a truck will mention it to them. People love this stuff.” Also by using social media rather than a traditional TV ad, Volvo is able to increase brand awareness of younger demographics who could be potential truck drivers some day.

The idea to illustrate the precision of Volvo Dynamic Steering with 53-year-old Van Damme doing an epic split was perfectly on point. Well done, Volvo. Well done.

JPMorgan, the biggest bank in the United States, has faced criminal investigations accompanied by $30 billion in fines and legal fees. Soooooo who’s bright idea was it to hold a Q&A with JPMorgan’s vice chairman Jimmy Lee on Twitter? Earlier this week JPMorgan tweeted this…

Their intention was to give college students the opportunity to communicate directly with senior executive Brian Marchiony. This wasn’t the case. Within 6 hours, the bank tweeted “#Badidea! Back to the drawing board” and within that time frame they received 6,000 responses. The #AskJPM hashtag was used in more than 24,000 posts but not in the way JPMorgan intended. The response was fast, vast, and absolutely hysterical.

In my Emarketing class we talked about the benefits and risks of a company using Twitter to communicate with the public. This is a prime example of how social media, if used in the wrong setting, could seriously tarnish a company’s reputation. The timing of a social media campaign has to be on point and you have to be prepared to handle the backlash as quickly has possible. It will be interesting to see how JPMorgan plays this failure off…Good luck to them.

If you got a kick out of this post, click here to view the top 13 most epic twitter fails by big brands.

Facebook released a startling statement this month when they realized a decrease in daily users, specifically among teenagers. So why is Facebook so worried when they currently have 1.2 billion monthly active users? The answer is simple. Teens are the demographic who point the rest of us towards the next big thing and that next big thing appears to be Facebook’s enemy, messaging apps.

Facebook seems to be a victim of its own success. Back in the day, Facebook was primarily used by younger generations to post pictures of their weekend antics and uninhibited status updates. Now, Facebook’s 1.2 billion users is made up of your mom, dad, and grandparents who are flooding your wall with embarrassing comments and liking every picture you post to their newsfeed…embarrassing.

Due to the limited privacy Facebook offers teenagers, they are switching to messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, to share content with their friends. WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps with 350 million monthly active users (Twitter only has 218 million!). Messaging apps are posing a big threat to established social networks because they not only allow you to message your friends, you can also play games, send stickers and share music. These features have turned messaging apps into social networks and they have grabbed the attention of teenagers. It can only be assumed that older generations are soon to follow. Facebook- you’ve been warned.

Tesco Mobile, UK’s largest mobile virtual network operator, has taken a different approach to addressing people’s concerns on Twitter. In previous emarketing classes we discussed social media triage and the best ways to go about answering peoples comments on social media platforms.

One of the most important things we addressed was that when you reply to a disgruntled customer, you must do so in the most respectful way possible because other customers will be able to read your reply. However, this wasn’t the case for Tesco Mobile. Instead of kindly referring people to customer service, Tesco Mobile tweeted back snarky, hilarious remarks to customers that were complaining about their services on Twitter.

For example, @JayFeliipe tweeted “Immediate turnoff if a girl’s mobile network is tesco mobile,” Tesco replied: “Are you really in a position to be turning girls away?”. Instead of being upset with Tesco’s snide comment, bystanders loved it and retweeted it more than 6,000 times! In order to make up for humiliating @JayFeliipe online, Tesco sent him a gift for being so good-natured about getting publicly burned. Here are few more witty Tesco comebacks.

I think it is refreshing for a company to take a risk and challenge the norms of Twitter etiquette. This could have gone horribly wrong but luckily customers responded in a very positive way and now Tesco’s Twitter account is getting more activity than ever before.

Last Friday Google announced their latest advertising technique that has privacy-worshipers everywhere completely outraged. Similar to Facebook, Google advertisements will now feature users’ profile pictures from Google+ next to brands that they recommend. For instance, if you are searching for a sushi restaurant on Google, your friend’s profile picture might appear next to an advertisement for a sushi restaurant near you.

In an effort to stay competitive with Facebook, Google has been very quick to copy their advertising features. First they created “+1”, which is similar to the “like” button on Facebook, and now they are including users’ pictures just like Facebook did with “Sponsored Stories”. Google should be wary of this advertising technique because Facebook has been sued over “Sponsored Stories”, which put friends’ profile pictures next to brands that they liked on social networks.

Although you can opt-out of including your picture on Google+, people are very upset by this privacy violation. Only one day after Google+ made the announcement, people started protesting by changing their profile pictures to a picture of Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. I’m interested to see if people are going to retaliate further by posting even more obscene profile pictures or if Google is going to figure out a method, such as bribery, to encourage users to make recommendations and share their profile pictures. Stay tuned.

Click here to read more about this topic.

Earlier this year Volvo came out with their new FMX Truck and they have taken a very extreme, dangerous approach to promoting it. A series of videos have been released that demonstrate the truck’s key features in a very unconventional way. For instance, Claes Nilsson, Volvo’s president, stood on top of a suspended FMX Volvo Truck in order to demonstrate the robustness of the truck’s towing hook. Not only that, they also had a 175 g hamster named Charlie, steer the 15 tonne Volvo FMX to show how easy the dynamic steering wheel is. You have to see it to believe it!

Volvo’s latest video came out today, where the agency Forsman & Bodenfors created an amazing stunt that incorporated a smaller-scale version of Spain’s Running with the Bulls. The FMX truck was painted red and raced through the Spanish town of Ciudad Rodrigo followed by a large herd of angry bulls. The video was directed by the Oscar nominated director, Henry Alex Rubin, and it took 28 cameras to capture the video. I can only imagine what they are going to come up with next.

Molson Canadian’s “I. Am. Canadian” campaign has brought laughter and tears to audiences with their extremely empowering commercials that strike pride in the hearts of Canadians. Instead of creating a commercial to relaunch the “I. Am. Canadian” campaign that had phased out in 2004, they engaged Molson fans around the world by putting bright red beer fridges in random European locations such as Canterbury, White Cliffs of Dover, Northern France, Cassel, London, Brussels, and Rural Belgium. The fridges are stocked full of Molson beer and can only be opened by scanning a Canadian passport. When I first heard about the campaign I was a little skeptical but after watching their promotional YouTube video I quickly changed my mind. This campaign is very creative and it is a great way to increase Canadian pride, which is what Molson Canadian’s brand is all about.

This campaign was launched by the company ReThink, which is located in Toronto. So why did they choose Europe? “Sometimes, you’re most proud of where you’re from when you’re away from home,” stated ReThink. At first I thought that by having the fridges located in Europe it exclude other nationalities and Molson would be criticized for it. However, you can see in the video that the fridges didn’t necessarily exclude anyone, it brought different nationalities together over sharing beer with a proud Canadian.

“Hey everyone, come see how good I look!” Will Farrell is at it again, playing everyone’s favorite character from the movie “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy”. The film made $28.4 million in its opening weekend, and $90.6 million worldwide in its total theatrical run so it’s no surprise that there would be a sequel to follow. This December, “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” will be in theaters and Will Farrell lovers everywhere (including myself) are counting down the days until its release.

There have been many promotional activities leading up the new movies release. Two weeks ago, many Canadian movie theaters including Vancouver’s Scotia Bank Theatre showed reruns of the first Anchorman movie for only $6. With all the publicity the sequel is getting, it was only a matter of time until a company, such as Chrysler, capitalized on the opportunity to cross promote with the movie. A series of commercials were launched earlier today that were hilarious, silly and had very little to do with the car itself. Kudos to Chrysler for taking a chance and recognizing the hype around Anchorman’s release and successfully attaching itself to the movie. This isn’t their usual commercial where the vehicle’s rugged, powerful features are the main focus. Instead they put the main focus on Ron Burgundy and subtly mentioned the vehicles MPGs, horse power and roomy glove compartment in a comical way so that viewers were more in engaged and had a fun experience watching the video.

Click Here to view the commercials!

You stay classy Vancouver.

As we discussed in our previous Comm 464 E-Marketing class, companies that fail to jump on the digital bandwagon are going to be left behind. Topshops’s marketing chief Justin Cooke was quoted in “The Guardian” today saying, “Brands without a strong digital vision will struggle in the future”. I strongly agree with this statement because it seems unthinkable that a professional company that wants to stay competitive, wouldn’t be interested in utilizing the benefits of social media.

For instance, until this year the biannual London Fashion Week typically attracts less than 50,000 people. However, its recent partnership with Google, which used YouTube videos and Google+, reached up to 4 million viewers. It is no recent news that social media is the fastest way to reach more viewers so I don’t understand what took them so long to implement it.

Now that the fashion industry is starting to incorporate technology in their marketing, the competition is high to see who can add the most creative digital touches to their shows. For example, the British Fashion Council is including live streaming multiple catwalk shows that for the first time, link directly to their Twitter account. This gives the public the opportunity to interact with the fashion industry via a weekly #FashionFriday news bulletin.

Another point that was mentioned in this article that I would like to highlight was the use of personal messaging for Topshop’s latest Christmas message. Recording Kate Bosworth saying each individual name before the generic message is a great example of how technology can help a company personalize an experience. We have been discussing in class and in our lessons on Hootsuite the importance of personalization and relationship building. The more personal you can make a message on Twitter and Facebook, the more your client will appreciate it and the stronger your relationship will be with them. Technology, if used correctly, is the most efficient way to reach an audience and it is great to see another industry taking advantage of the benefits of social media.