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Saying Goodbye to Vine: 5 Times Marketers got it Right

Twitter announced last week that it will be shutting down its much loved 6 second video app Vine over the coming months. Vine was purchased by the company back in 2012 for a reported $30 million.
The shock announcement, which sent fans into a frenzy, also came in the wake of the news that Twitter is cutting its workforce by 9%. Twitter has not given a reason for the job cuts, however the company has reportedly been struggling to find a new buyer, leading to speculation of a possible company revamp in order to attract potential investors.

Despite no longer being able to use the mobile app, both Twitter and Vine have released a statement assuring fans that existing content will not be removed from the website. “We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. “You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.”

Whilst Vine was well known for showcasing upcoming stars and comical content, the app also managed to attract the attention of some of the biggest brands in the world, with companies such as Sony and Adidas quickly realising the apps marketing potential.

With this is mind, we take a look back at some of the best marketing vines created in the last 4 years:

 

1.Oreo

Views/loops:243,236

https://vine.co/v/Mhln0j7IHJH

 

2.Dunkin Donuts

Views/Loops:29,643

https://vine.co/v/Mu3PQBPLdXe

 

3.The White House

Views/Loops:3,106,705

https://vine.co/v/O9TEhID2O2U

 

4.Smart Car

Views/Loops: 9,421

https://vine.co/v/O0MHinm6OL1

 

5.Marmite

Views/Loops: 1,056,024

https://vine.co/v/im3PDpevE0n

 

Marketing aside, here are the most popular vines:

 

1.A football fan captures the moment a bomb can be heard going off from inside the stadium during the November Paris attacks.

Views/loops:715,565,925

https://vine.co/v/iBb2x00UVlv

 

2. Leonardo Dicaprio pulls a funny face as Lady Gaga walks past at the Golden Globes.

Views/Loops:114,584,845

https://vine.co/v/iMAHYTw00bH

3. A little boy gets a surprise when a rotating foam stick picks him up.

Views/Loops: 95,820,686

https://vine.co/v/e6nLQQuYJPn

 

4. A toddler pretends to be excited about his avocado present.

Views/Loops:119,339,261

https://vine.co/v/ewJP7Mh0A1V

 

5. A dog pretends to be a human.

Views/Loops:24,282,342

https://vine.co/v/b623zdwVuJB

 

 

 

 

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10 years of Twitter and some interesting facts that will blow your mind

Did you know that one of the early names considered for the platform was “Friendstalker”? We’re not so sure how successful the network would have been with that name or even if it would reach its 10th birthday; but, having done so and with over 305 million monthly users, we’re sharing some of the most impressive and fascinating facts about the platform to date.

Most retweeted tweet

Can you guess? That’s right, Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscar selfie, with her Hollywood A-lister friends, received over 3.3 million retweets on Twitter. Selfie-taking (for better or worse!) has now become a way of life for us all, to the extent that the term itself has now been accepted into our dictionaries. It somehow seems fitting then that the modern selfie phenomenon would lead to Twitter’s most significant sharing moment to date.

Most followed person

Somewhat surprisingly you might think, given the competition, American pop-star Katy Perry is Twitter’s most-followed person, boasting nearly 85 million users, which is more than the population of Spain. Katy is closely followed by pop prince Justin Bieber, with 78 million followers and pop princess, Taylor Swift, with 74 million.

Most tweeted emoji

To date, the most tweeted emoji with 14.5 billion impressions is the ‘tears of joy’ emoji. Personally, we like the aubergine!

Most tweeted hashtag

Hashtags have been named ‘the child of Twitter’. Their development enabled users to employ the hashtags to start a conversation, participate in trends and make new connections. The most popular hashtag to date is #FF – Follow Friday. For those of you not already #FF savvy, this is a popular phenomenon where users encourage their followers to follow new accounts; either because they’re new to the network or have done something worthy of recognition.

Total number of tweets

Since Twitter’s launch 10 years ago, the network has managed to generate 500 million tweets per day across the world. On average, 6,000 tweets are tweeted every second, which corresponds to over 350,000 tweets per minute.

Most geo-tagged location

Surprisingly, the most geo-tagged location is south-east Brazilian city Sao Paulo, having received over 638 million tags. Sao Paulo is classed as one of the world’s most popular cities with well over 11 million inhabitants.

With Twitter reaching its 10th birthday and generating 6,000 tweets per second, us marketers are intrigued to know what the numbers will look like on its 20th birthday? Will it even get there? With the rapid rise of rivals Instagram and Snapchat eating into Twitter’s audience and user base, some marketers are heralding its imminent demise. Will it become the next MySpace or have Twitter got something up their sleeve to secure its position in the social media platform hierarchy for another decade? Only time will tell…

If you’ve found any more fascinating facts about Twitter which you think is worthy of being added to our list, get in touch!

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#MarketingTitbits – 2016 Business Trends, 10 New Year’s Resolutions, #Twitter10K

trends-resolutions-twitter1. 2016 trends: what will impact your business this year
New Year, new business? Marketing Week has put together a list of key issues to keep an eye out for in 2016. Other than pricing, will brands find something new to go to war on?

Mobile messaging is about to transform the way consumers interact with brands. Not only will this be for customer service issues, but also to manage appointments and make bookings. Hitting the #2 spot is mobile-friendly apps, where the UK will see the launch of Atom Bank – the first mobile-only bank. Same-day delivery services will also be top priority for businesses.

To view the 2016 trends in full, click here.

2. 10 New Year’s Resolutions entrepreneurs should make every year

Have you still kept to your New Year’s resolutions? If you are guilty of making unreasonable and unrealistic New Year’s resolutions, this could be for you. New goals being set at the beginning of each year can be a valuable assist in determining long-term success for businesses, and is something that entrepreneurs should consider seriously.

One of the top resolutions that every entrepreneur should make, is to commit to understanding one’s finances better, meaning familiarising oneself with accounting basics better. Being able to effectively run a business is an exhausting job; therefore improving health is another vital resolution. Keeping up on current events can also be important when looking to open conversations and build new relationships.

Were any of these on your list? If you’d like to see the full list, click here.

3. #Twitter1K: possibility of 10,000 character limit creates big buzz

As you probably already know, Twitter has some big changes in store for this year, and it’s created a huge buzz. Having to change words such as “you” to “u” will no longer be an issue, as there’s a strong possibility that the character limit will be extended.

In response to the proposed changes, many have shared their thoughts by using the hashtag #Twitter10K. Stephen Murdoch, Vice President at Enterprise Canada, shared “#Twitter10K. If someone can’t articulate their thoughts in 140 characters, it’s probably not worth reading”. On the other hand, Danny Gonzalez asks, “Why don’t people want the character limit to increase? I think it’s awesome. #Twitter10K”. What do you think and what will it do to Twitter’s appeal?

See what others thought by clicking here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Twitter, Ribena, Innocent

twitter-ribena-innocent-smaller1. Like it or not, you’ll have Twitter’s new profile by May 28th
Last month, Twitter announced that they will be updating the Twitter profile design. It’s true that the new design bears more than a passing resemblance to Facebook, but like it or not, you will be using it from May 28th.

You have probably already seen the new design, as new users and some existing users have been using it over the past month. It appears that some Twitter users aren’t happy about the change and have been expressing their opinions over Twitter.

To read more, click here. 

 

2. Ribena ad banned for ‘exaggerated’ health boasts

In a bid to make their marketing “more consumer friendly”, Ribena got an advert banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.

The company had reworded health claims associated with the vitamins present in its products, such as “Vitamin A… helps keep your vision in tip-top condition” and “Vitamin C… it helps immunity”. Unfortunately, the ASA claimed that Ribena implied the vitamins make the body perform better when in reality they just help the body to maintain its normal function.

To read more, click here.

 

 

3. Innocent juice campaign will run despite Indian mangoes import ban

As of May 2nd, the EU decided that the shipments of mangoes from India must be suspended. This is because some consignments of the fruit were found to be infested with fruit flies, which were deemed to be dangerous if brought over to the UK. David Cameron has said he will “do his best to reverse this ban so we can keep the special relationship with India”.

However, in the meantime, Innocent had to make a decision about whether they would run their new advertising campaign, which features the story about Bedrul who produces the mangoes that go into one of Innocent’s juice blends.

To read more and to watch the advert, click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Twitter, Alzheimer’s, advertising

twitter-alzheimers-advertising-smaller1. Tips to help your business gain more followers on Twitter
 If you’re using Twitter the chances are you will be tweeting content as often as you can – and if you’re not you really should be. With this in mind, you don’t want to be tweeting to an absent audience; no one wants their tweets to get lost somewhere in cyberspace.

But do not fret, there are a few things you can do to help your business gain new followers. Ensuring that you have some personality is a great way to entice people into following you, tweeting Christmas party images and news about the team is a great way to make things a bit more personal! Searching for people in your industry is another great way to find relevant Twitter followers – not only are they more likely to follow you, they’re more likely to retweet and favourite your posts.

To have a look at more tips for helping your business to gain new followers on Twitter, click here.

 

2. The Facebook campaign that simulated Alzheimer’s disease

 If you’ve ever had anyone close to you suffer the misfortune of Alzheimer’s disease, you might have a better understanding of how terrifying it is to lose your memory of where you’ve been, who you’ve been with or even who the people are around you.

However, it can still be hard to understand what it really is like for those suffering. For that reason Alzheimer Nederland set up a Facebook campaign to give people a taster of what it can be like for Alzheimer’s suffers. They created images of people, who hadn’t even liked their Facebook page, in places where they had never been and tagged them in the images. The image captions read “Confusing right? You’re now experiencing what it’s like to have Alzheimer’s disease” and then prompted the Facebook user to send the app to a friend.

To have a look at the heart-warming campaign, click here.

 

3. Six trends in advertising you need to know for 2014

Are you ready for the New Year ahead and the trends that have been predicted for advertising? If not, we’ve found a great article that highlights the six key trends that are likely to affect advertising this year, predicted by the Chief Executive of Econsultacy, Ashley Friedlein.

From real time bidding trends, video advertising and mobile advertising, to read the full article, click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – news sites, images, clickbait

news-images-clickbait-smaller1. BBC is the most shared UK news outlet on Twitter, Mail Online is filth
A new study from PeerIndex shows the most popular news outlets in the UK compared to the number of shares they have on Twitter. Perhaps unsurprisingly, The BBC is the most shared news website, with just over 4.2 million articles shared on Twitter in January 2014. In second place was the Guardian with more than 2.4 million articles. The Telegraph and the Independent came in 3rd and 4th place respectively, with 913,000 and 616,000 shares respectively, but the most interesting figure of all is number 5 on the list.

The world’s most popular news website, which had almost 190 million unique visitors, worldwide, in January alone is none other than the Mail Online. However, whilst many people are looking at it, it seems not as many are willing to admit that they spend their lunch breaks perusing the website, with far fewer visitors sharing its content than on their less popular rival news sites. Their content may be interesting and eye-catching but is it really sharable? Only 453,000 people shared content from the Mail Online with their Twitter followers in January 2014. It suggests the Mail Online may be many people’s guilty pleasure! 

 

2. Eight free image resources for your website or blog

For all you bloggers and website owners out there, we have found a great article that highlights some of the best free image resources for you. We understand how tempting it can be to use Google images rather than searching for the perfect picture from pages of cheesy stock images. However, it is important not to breach copyright, which if challenged can come with a hefty price tag.

Changing your settings on Google images to filter out any that you can’t reuse is one way to find images, but in addition to this there are a number of free sites you can use. To read more, click here. 

 

3. The dirty secrets of clickbait

It might be that you have never heard of “clickbait” before; however the chances are you’ve probably experienced it. The term refers to an eye-catching link on a website which aims to make people read on, no matter how ridiculous, pointless or far-fetched the title seems.

To read more about the dirty secrets of clickbait, why people seem to have a love/hate relationship with it and what marketers can learn from it, click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Lego, blogging, Marc Jacobs

lego-blog-marcjacobs-smaller1. Lego to co-create marketing campaign with UK fansLego is calling upon all UK fans to help create a marketing campaign by suggesting new product ideas for a global market. Lego’s head of global community co-creation said despite the fact the company is not expecting the new products to be the next Ninjango or Lego Movie, it is hoping to build on the trust it already has within its UK community of fans. Lego are also encouraging the fans to promote this new marketing campaign via their own social media profiles.

Similarly, in the past, Lego have invited fans to give input to their marketing. For example, students in Canada sent a balloon with a Lego figure attached to the edge of space and scenes in the Lego Movie have been created by fans. To read more, click here. 

 

2. Blogger vs. Word Press: which is better for beginners?

If you’ve never written or had a blog before and you’d like to but don’t know how to get started, this is a great article for you. The two most widely used blogging platforms out there are Blogger and WordPress but it can be difficult to decide which one is best for you.

They differ in terms of ease of use, aesthetics and how easy they are to integrate to social media channels but really it all comes down to what type of blogger you are. If you’re looking for a blog that is simple, without much room for customisation, then blogger may be the one for you. However, if you’re more serious about blogging in the long term and want your blog to be totally unique, WordPress is probably the platform for you.

To read the full article, click here. 

 

3. Marc Jacobs takes to Twitter to find face of new campaign

Last week, Marc Jacobs made a controversial decision to find the face of their campaign not by the traditional method of model agencies, but through Twitter. The designer brand asked fans to post a selfie with the hashtag #CastMeMarc.

This is not the first time the company have taken to Twitter; during London Fashion Week they opened a ‘tweet shop’ allowing customers to make purchases simply by tweeting about the brand! To read more, click here.

 

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#MarketingTitbits – Tesco, Steve Jobs and Twitter

Tesco-Jobs-Twitter-smaller1. Tesco buys into big data to make marketing more personalised
In a bid to make their marketing more personalised and improve Clubcard loyalty programmes, Tesco’s subsidiary Dunnhumby, have purchased big data technology firm Sociomantic. The combined data of the two will mean that Tesco have access to an “unprecedented” database of more than a billion people.

The CEO of Dunnhumby says this “will allow Tesco to improve its online marketing to provide a better experience for consumers and advertisers.” Tesco is hoping to improve its Clubcard scheme by going digital, this will eventually mean away with plastic cards and paper vouchers and will allow customers to collect points via their mobile.

To read more, click here. 

 

2. Steve Jobs’ 13 most inspiring quotes

“Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

Just two inspiring quotes from Steve Jobs, to read more, click here. 

 

3. Twitter’s redesign: is it turning into Facebook?

You may have noticed the changes Twitter have made in the last week. They have totally redesigned the profile pages making them look and feel much more like Facebook’s profile pages.

Some of the specific changes include:

  • Larger profile photos and banner images that stretch across the whole page
  • Popular tweets will be larger and easier for users to find – these are tweets that have had a high engagement rate
  • A new feature that allows users to pin their favourite tweets to the top of their profile
  • Users now have the ability to filter the tweets of the individuals they follow

To read more, click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Twitter, Slogans, Colours

Twitter-slogans-colours2-smaller1. Twitter ‘Buy Now’ button appears for the first time
Twitter have added a new feature to your news feed which you may have already noticed. The ‘Buy now’ button was first spotted last Monday and by clicking it users can buy the product from a website called Fancy.

So far, the button has only been appearing on the mobile version of the social networking site and it could be that the button is an experiment or an accidental release. To read more, click here. 

 

2. The winning straplines that stand the test of time

“Just do it”, “I’m lovin’ it” and “Making life taste better” are three examples of memorable straplines from some of the brands we love. Despite the plethora of inspired straplines, there is a real overabundance of forgotten slogans that didn’t catch on, or were just plain awful!

Picking a good slogan can be hard but Marketing Week has written an article helping to do so. To read the full article, click here. 

 

3. Can you identify these brands by their trademarked colours?

Colour is one of the first things that you notice about a brand and often the most memorable. When you think of the colour blue you might think of Twitter, Ford and HP or for red Levi’s, Coca-Cola or Vodafone.

Different colours connote different emotions and usually a brand’s colour scheme will be heavily influenced by the emotions they portray. To see if you can identify popular brands by their trademarked colours, click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – social media fails, YouTube, Twitter’s year

fails-youtube-twitter-smaller1. The top 20 fail-iest social media fails of 2014
As the impact of New Year’s exploits begin to wear off, it’s an ideal time to look back on 2014 and reminisce about some of the greatest brand fails on social media last year! Thanks to Econsultancy, you can scroll through their list of awkwardness which will have you shaking your head at some businesses thoughtlessness.

Proving that not all brands are as smart as they seem, is LG, who ‘cleverly’ mock the iPhone, whilst using the very device they are critiquing during their mocking tweet. Others putting businesses to shame include US airline, Delta, who may need to polish up on their geography knowledge, and logistics giant, DHL, who did a lot more bad than good with their ‘like to send Jules your best wishes’ post.

Click here to check out some of the others, including fails from celebrities like Rita Ora and Robin Thicke.

2. YouTube crams every big Internet moment of the year into one insane mashup

Since 2010, YouTube have released their yearly ‘Rewind’, reminding us of the biggest moments from the year gone by. This year is no different as last month they debuted ‘Turn Down for 2014’. One thing that the video reinforces is that we spent the majority of the year very, very wet.

The video re-enacts some big moments from 2014, including, the Ice Bucket Challenge, viral videos like ‘First Kiss’ and the ‘Devil Baby Prank’, which we spoke about a few weeks ago. You’ll also find references to other things, such as popular songs that have topped the charts. Can you spot them all?

Grab some popcorn, press pause on 2015 for 5 minutes and rewind by clicking here.

3. Twitter’s year in review: World Cup, Ferguson and Ellen’s golden tweet

Twitter’s Year in Review microsite allows you to look back on 2014 through the eyes of Twitter. If it happened in 2014, then it happened on Twitter, which reinforces the ever growing influence of social media in modern day life.

Some of the biggest moments from the previous 12 months include a few of the world’s biggest entertainment awards ceremonies, with the likes of The Brits, The Grammys and The Golden Globes all making an appearance. Other events that played out over Twitter include the World Cup and Ferguson riots.

If you’d like to throwback to the biggest moments of 2014, then you can do so by clicking here.

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