Media 2025 | The Connected Society

Today, the term “media” can mean different things to different people.  Ultimately, however, media is mass communication regarded collectively. Media today can be the message, the medium, or the messenger; and to complicate things, the lines between them are becoming very blurry. 

Social Media is participatory and connected media.  One might argue that once all media is participatory and connected that the term ‘social’ is redundant.  Media is simply media.  The future of social media, therefore, is a discussion on the future of media itself. To that end, social will just be folded into the broader marketing discipline.

Social Media today is focused on driving real-time engagement, (unedited and unfiltered) live streaming video, Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), Internet of Things (IoT), social commerce, mobile wallets, metadata, search/visibility, data-driven decisions, content marketing and mobile devices.

Moving into 2018, more and more users are using messenger apps (e.g. Facebook Messenger, Slack, and WhatsApp) but there’s still a lot of growth happening in social networks. Social platforms, social customs, and communication standards are all in a constant process of evolution.

Transparency is the new black, and there is a clear shift from talking at the world to making the world talk. To wit, most branded content in the next years will come from consumers, and user-generated content will far exceed branded content.  The next wave of media apps will help filter the clutter.

Ultimately, everything that can be connected to the Internet will be by 2025 (i.e. homes, humans/ wearable tech, TVs, cars, jet engines, locomotives, lights, appliances, etc.) That said, people will care increasingly more about culture than products.  

MOVING AHEAD

The future of media is inextricably linked to technology. The promise of technology was always to improve the way people live and to make our lives simpler and easier.  Around the world, people are utilising technology to create new communities, engage across boundaries, make the world more inclusive, and change the way we interact.  This transformation is happening everywhere and in every culture, country, and industry. 

Integrated mobile devices like Google Glass and the Apple Watch are already taking major steps to eliminate the gap between “technology” and “life.”  What is clear is that we have quickly evolved from the age of industrialisation to the connected society.

The connected society transforms everything. Information and communications technology (ICT) and big data are also fueling the rise of a new economy in which new market actors – commercial, "indiepreneurial," and crowd-sourced – are empowered with new models of production and exchange, as well as automated, frictionless and highly personalised consumption. 

In this new economy, consumers become curators rather than receivers, products give way to services, and consumers adopt more and more complex roles as citizens, users, co-creators, specialists, and actors.  Collaboration, crowd funding, crafting and sharing are just some of the hallmarks of the modern, involved consumer. 

The connected society encourages a rise of meritocracy and the formation of a creative elite.  Within this order, merit is increasingly defined by a new set of emerging values, such as knowledge, transparency, fairness, quality of experience, authenticity, sociality, healthiness, and simplicity.  The ability to make informed choices, to a very large extent, will drive the consumers of the connected society.

Fast-forward to the future, and we should see global media usage continue on its upward trajectory.  By 2020, eMarketer projects that 2.44 billion of the world's population will be on connected networks. Media usage will be ubiquitous, seamless, and integrated into our daily lives in a multitude of ways.

The ways we both input and observe media will also shift. Holographic displays will be shifting into the mainstream and keyboards on desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones will become increasingly irrelevant, as interactions on what was once called social media will largely be voice-controlled.

Driven by continued advancements in technology and rapid rollouts of commercial products, the future will be shaped by an information ecosystem that’s increasingly more intuitive, anticipatory, transparent and personalised. Some very fundamental human activities like learning, thinking, working, and being “present” with others will be transformed by these changes.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing will also play an integral role in shaping the future. Over time, the computer itself - whatever its form factor - will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. Your phone, for example, will proactively bring up the right documents, schedule and map your meetings, let people know if you are late, suggest responses to messages, handle your payments and expenses. Technology won’t just serve as tools for you, but they’ll even serve as your stand-in in some cases.

Even today, Google’s new messaging app, Allo, scans your texts; understand the context and supplies readymade human-like responses for you (“Cute dog!” and “That’s good!”). Not just when you were sent words, but even when you were sent pictures.  Just imagine how much more dynamic and robust these technologies will become.

As a result, Social Media will become far more specialised and personalised to the actual needs and interests of each audience member. By 2025, social media sites will have adapted their platform for each user so that it would appear by today’s standards that people live in their own universe.

Social Media platforms will compete to maintain their share of the audience.  Users of social media will gradually only expose themselves to the news that affects them. Future platforms will be even more equipped to predict exactly what users will need to keep them engaged.

Social media platforms will connect advertisers with potential customers by using multiple regression analysis and correlation analysis.  When a consumer behaves differently than the formula predicted, the formula will automatically adjust.  The connected society will know when you are tired, hungry, thirsty, stressed, or even low on Vitamin C. 

In the connected society envisioned in 2025 people will increasingly seek out a sense of belonging and social media platforms will provide “fireplaces” for people to gather around and topics for interaction, conversation and relationship building.  Products, services and brands will be instilled with meaning more through the crowd than through branding and marketing efforts.

Products and services infused with a social component of some kind can more easily move from product/service status to an experience. For the 2025 consumer, an experience will always be more original than the actual product or service. This means that consumers will be looking for original experiences delivered by humans and which are embedded in a social context, rather than searching for specific products and services. Subsequently, a value will be grafted onto products and services by how a network of users – or a network of peers – decides to use them.

Human beings are inherently social animals, and we are ultimately at the centre of our own universes. On average, people spend 60 percent of conversations talking about themselves—and this figure jumps to 80 percent when communicating via social media platforms.  As a result, our social media platforms will increasingly place us at the centre of our unique, personalised ecosystem. Parents in 2025 won’t be complaining about their children spending too much time texting.  They'll be complaining that their son or daughter seldom step out of their own self-made virtual-world.

Social Media in 2025 will be a ubiquitous enabler, producer and facilitator that shift the consumer from receiver to curator.  This is a natural evolution of a sharing economy and change in values, preferring services and access to function, rather than ownership. This means that businesses will have to engage and collaborate with users in different roles rather than as passive consumers.

Social Media will continue to create and connect new communities, engage across boundaries, make the world more inclusive and fundamentally change the way we live. As William Gibson espoused, (Neuromancer, 1984) this brave new world will be “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.”

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Written by Andrew B. Giles. Andrew is the head of digital innovation and strategy at Goodbuzz Inc. You can follow him @Goodbuzz and on Facebook. 

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Goodbuzz is a digital agency based in Toronto, Canada. We help brands create and capture value from emerging trends in technology, society and the workplace. We prototype the future - and believe the best way to predict it - is to create it.  Follow us on Facebook or Twitter or if you have any questions contact us directly.

Understanding And Effectively Using A Hashtag #

Hashtags are like keywords that can be used to organize messages on a social network. A hashtag is only a type of label or metadata tag used on social network and microblogging services which makes it easier for users to find information. To understand hashtags you need to understand social search.  For example https://www.hashatit.com/ 

Just imagine that there are a number of people who are searching on specific topics (without knowing anyone on Twitter.) How do they find out who is tweeting about the things that they care about?  They use social search engines (as demonstrated above.) Google also incorporates hashtag search but the social search example above ONLY searches hashtags.

Therefore, when we employ the use of hashtags we are really only tagging things that people are (potentially) searching for. Adding a hashtag therefore facilitates the searching and grouping of messages with their given hashtags.  The real power of hashtags comes from other people using the same keyword(s) so that by clicking on a hashtag you can get a group of other messages on that topic. 


Hashtags should make your messages easier to organize and find. The trick is to hashtag keywords that you think other people would use when looking for the content contained in your message. You can do a quick search for keywords prior to posting your message to see which hashtags are popular (called “trending”). 

People typically use hashtags to: 

• Identify places, things, or brands or events: #Hawaii #Ferrari #CoolEvent  
• Connect with like-minded individuals: #CatLovers #TVaddicts

There are really only two reasons we employ hashtags: 

• Organize content 
• Increase exposure

These are obviously compelling reasons to use hashtags on your personal messages. They are even more compelling when it comes to using social media to promote your business. 

Three common mistakes to avoid: 

• Hashtagging every word (i.e. #I #am #so #excited #today)  
• Hashtagging the same word more than once (i.e. It is my #birthday. Here is a photo of my #birthday cake, my #birthday presents, and my awesome #birthday party!)  
• Separating keywords. If your keyword is “black cat” your hashtag should be #BlackCat. If you write it as #Black #Cat this will give you two different keywords: “black” and “cat”.

The most effective use of hashtagging is when you first search http://hashtagify.me/ and see what is trending.  If you can add a (relevant) trending hashtag to a post you’re effectively then entering a much larger conversation (and will naturally have much higher exposure.)

Anything you post with the word Canada in it (for example only) should be #Canada. Use the hashtag search and search for #Canada – and the social search engine will aggregate everyone's posts using the hashtag #Canada.  In a business environment, for example, if you worked as a marketer for Dyson, you may be reaching out to people using #vacuumcleaners (or whatever the most relevant hashtag was related to vacuums. 

Imagine in the Arab Spring when Egyptians were trying to overthrow their government.  If the people were limited to sharing information ONLY with those they know and follow on Twitter – very little information could be shared and little could be accomplished.  But if they searched for and followed the hashtag most relevant to the uprising (#arabsping for example,) and everyone was posting updates, news, and information using the hashtag #arabspring – you can start to see just how powerful hashtags are to aggregating and disseminating information.

Lastly, and you can of course experiment as you choose, but I was also lead to believe that there should never be more than three hashtags in any post. Keep it relevant and logical based upon what topics you think people are searching for.  

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Goodbuzz is a digital agency based in Toronto, Canada. We help brands create and capture value from emerging trends in technology, society and the workplace. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.  Or contact us at info@Goodbuzz.ca and let us know how we may be of assistance to you.

The State of Digital Marketing In 2015 - Trends and Analysis

It’s clear that we live in a fast moving, hyper-transparent and digitized age. On all levels. Rapid change is the key defining reality of our era. Companies either drive it, adapt to it, or succumb to it. Some may feel threatened by this trend, but we see it as an excellent opportunity for brands to differentiate themselves.  You just need to know where it’s all going.

It also helps to understand that there are no real boundaries today between digital marketing, design, content, advertising, retail design and other disciplines. The distinctions are artificial. In fact, for the consumer, almost every moment in their day-to-day life involves an interaction with a brand, and all are equally important. Every touch point must therefore be carefully created to provide a rich and consistent experience.

If, as Marshall McLuhan espoused, “the media is the message” then the consumer is the medium today.  Positive endorsement from other consumers is the most powerful media available to brands. This is especially true in today’s content- saturated world.  Audiences are no longer swayed by messaging - it takes coherent, immersive experiences that create conversational capital. Brands must earn consumer attention by providing value in the form of entertainment, information, and utility.

That said, to assist in navigating through this rapidly changing competitive environment here are our predictions for 2015.

Mobile-optimization

Optimizing for mobile has been a significant priority for businesses in 2014, but 2015 will be the year that mobile strategies move beyond simply having a responsive site or mobile app, and focus on mobile-optimized content and social media marketing as well.

We know that Google has been placing additional emphasis on how mobile-friendly sites are; in fact, they’ve stated that mobile usability is now “relevant for optimal search results.” This emphasis is apparent in the recent launch of a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools called Mobile Usability.

2015 will see businesses finally incorporating mobile into all areas of their digital marketing: a fully responsive website, mobile ads, and separate content specifically for mobile website users. Businesses will also begin to realize the necessity of having a mobile social media strategy that considers how mobile users consume and interact with social media posts.

Social media spend will increase significantly

Brands will finally realize the importance of social media marketing.  As organic post reach continues to fall, and as platforms like Facebook further restrict what types of posts can be shown in users’ feeds, paid advertising is only going to increase as businesses struggle to maintain traffic and sales from social media channels.

Some businesses are seeing positive results from their investment in social media (some are not), including increased exposure and traffic, and are seeing paid social ads as the way to scale these results.  Twitter’s new advertising options (beta) for example has transactional payment triggered by specific actions like website clicks, app downloads and email opt-ins.  This will mean small to medium-sized businesses will be far more likely to invest in these objective-based campaigns.  Note also that Micro-sites will also be used far more in 2015 for promotional activities as they help direct traffic to the main site and thus facilitate or bolster it’s popularity.

Inbound + Content marketing will be (even) bigger than ever

According to the B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks report, 93% of B2B marketers said they used content marketing in 2014, and 42% said they considered their strategy effective (up from 36% last year).

As marketers continue to see the benefits of their content strategies, a portion of the money previously earmarked for search engine PPC, SEO and social media reach will be re-allocated to content marketing efforts.  A major struggle, however, will be finding ways to stand out amidst the throngs of other content vying for attention. Case studies, video content, research-intensive content, and authoritative content will be what give businesses an advantage over their competitors.

Businesses will also increasingly be willing to invest in mobile-specific content, including creating short-form content that’s easily readable on mobile devices, understanding their audience’s mobile habits and putting more emphasis on video and visual content that’s easily consumed via mobile.

Email marketing will receive a renewed focus

With social networks reducing the amount of visibility brands and businesses receive and with search engines intimidating business owners and marketers with ever-increasing complexity of their ranking algorithms, businesses will return to the one marketing asset that they can control entirely; their email list. This renewed focus on email marketing will intertwine with content marketing to blur the lines between e-mail and content marketing.

As brands realize the value of content marketing, they’ll begin to discover ways to streamline their email content in order to avoid redundancy.  One way in which they’ll do this is to repurpose existing content into downloadable PDF’s (such as whitepapers or value-added content), which can be offered as opt-in incentives to build an email list.

Brands will also begin to realize the necessity of differentiating themselves from their competitors when it comes to email marketing. In HubSpot’s 2014 Science of Email report, respondents reported a significant decline in how often they bought a product or service from email messages they had received (35% said “never” in 2014 compared to 25% in 2011). This finding underlines the importance of businesses employing creative, relationship-based strategies to their email marketing rather than just attempting to make a quick sale.  Think “less shotgun, more sniper rifle.”

The lines between SEO, content marketing and social media will become even more blurred

SEO and content marketing will continue to co-exist as two separate but intertwined disciplines that rely on each other for success. That said, content marketing is now the primary influencer of search visibility. Businesses that don’t invest in a solid content strategy will discover that their SEO campaigns are ineffective, at best, and damaging to their search visibility, at worst.

SEO will come to be seen more as a subset of online marketing, dealing with technical aspects such as meta-tags, indexing issues, penalty recovery, and keyword research. Social media, on the other hand, will come to be seen as a necessary amplifier of any content strategy. While businesses have been focused on creating high-quality content, less focus has been given to promoting and distributing that content.

Businesses will also increasingly realize the other important benefit of social media, including increased brand recognition and brand authority, improved customer insights and higher conversion rates.

Brands will scramble to humanize

With the rise of social media, brands will realize that their customers are on social media channels to interact with other people, not with brands and corporate-sounding lingo. Brands that are able to connect with their audience on a human-level will enjoy higher conversion rates, better brand loyalty, faster audience growth, and happier customers.

A company’s ability to humanize their brand (and find their unique brand voice) will be the single most important success factor using social media in 2015. Brands who engage and develop authentic relationships with their fans, followers and email subscribers will see tremendous benefits, all of which will ultimately increase their bottom line and ROI.

Marketers will find new ways of making native advertising more relevant (and less promotional)

With steadily decreasing click-through rates (CTR) over the past few years, businesses are realizing the ineffectiveness of banner advertising for driving sales. While increased visibility is still a benefit of banner ads, small to medium-sized business looking for results will be less inclined to invest in channels that don’t offer a calculable ROI.

With the increase in popularity of native ads, marketers and publishers will constantly be looking for new ways to mimic editorial content while remaining transparent to website visitors. 2015 will see collaborations between publishers and brands whereby sponsored content is specifically created to be shown alongside the primary content; in this way, native ads will not be promotional in nature, but instead will offer relevant and engaging supplementary content.

More and more, marketing and communications must widen their horizons and embrace the fact that, for brands, speaking to “consumers” is just not enough. Yes, we all are consumers and most of us accept this reality. But a more meaningful way of engaging people is to recognize that they are also, if not primarily, humans, fans, users, visitors, or guests (depending on the context). Your ability to develop rich experiences is rooted in this understanding.  Ultimately, focus less on crafting moments and more on creating movements. 

Have questions?  We’re here to help.  Drop us a line at info@goodbuzz.ca or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

The Trials And Tribulations of Marketing Alcohol

The global alcoholic drinks industry is expected to exceed $1 trillion in 2014, according to MarketLine. Market volume is predicted to reach almost 210 billion liters in 2014, a 10% increase in five years and the industry is characterized by increasing fragmentation (with the three leading companies holding almost 40% of overall market volume.) Alcohol marketing ranges from mass media advertising to sponsorship of events, product placement, internet, merchandise, usage of other products connected with alcohol brands, social networks etc.

So you think it would be fun to work on an alcohol brand?  We have certainly had our share of experiences over the years with brands like Mikes Hard Lemonade, Molson Canadian, Molson Dry, Rickard’s, Creemore, Heineken, and Coors Light to name a few.  This experience has taught us a number of lessons chiefly that the alcohol industry is a crowded one. 

You're fighting for shelf space where people judge you by your label, it's highly regulated (especially in Ontario and Canada,) and while alcohol marketing might sound a lot more sexy than whatever you're selling, it's really, really hard work.  But that doesn't mean you have a Super Bowl commercial or buy a billboard to get attention or disrupt.  There are a number of great examples of clever creativity from alcohol brands - both big and small.  For example:

Disruption 101: Make a spectacle of yourself

To celebrate their "Anytime Ale," Austin Beerworks created a limited edition 99-pack of beer for $99. At seven-feet long, this thing takes two people to carry out of the store (if you can find it). Since they only released a limited amount of these 99-packs, Austin Beerworks gave clues as to which grocery stores and gas stations around town would have them in stock on their social media accounts. People were lining up outside of convenience stores for hours to be the first to get them.

The lesson: Austin Beerworks didn't change their product or spend a ton on advertising to spread the word. Instead, they relied on the exclusivity to build up excitement and the spectacle of a seven-foot-long box of beer to keep it going. Even better, a 99-pack of beer is a perfect excuse to have a party and tell even more people about Austin Beerworks.

Exclusivity 101: Send them a golden ticket

We've talked about Maker's Mark's amazing Ambassador program before. It's all about helping their biggest fans take ownership of the brand and take pride in talking about it. When you sign up, you get your name on a barrel plaque. Once the bourbon in that barrel matures, they send you a golden ticket for the opportunity to come pick up your personal bottle from the batch and hand dip it in their iconic red wax.

The lesson: It doesn't get much more personal than that for a distillery churning out mass quantities of bourbon every day. Your customers love feeling a personal connection to your stuff, and Maker's Mark proves you don't have to run a small shop to pull it off.

Gamification 101: Product as Conversation Starter

Did you know that Pabst Blue Ribbon's beer bottles have playing cards printed underneath their caps? Or that Lone Star bottle caps have riddles written on them? These aren't just fun little gimmicks. They're conversation-starters. You can make a game out of the PBR "cards" you collect or ask your friends to help you solve Lone Star's bottle cap riddle (because they're not always easy).

The lesson: The more excuses (aka opportunities) you give your customers to talk to other people, the more they'll talk about your product.

For more unique insights in the world of participatory brand marketing please follow Goodbuzz on Twitter or Facebook. 

A Brief History Of Social Media

For those of you living in a cave, SOCIAL MEDIA are Internet sites where people interact freely, sharing and discussing information about each other and their lives, using a multimedia mix of personal words, pictures, videos and audio. At these Web sites, individuals and groups create and exchange content and engage in person-to-person conversations. They appear in many forms including blogs and microblogs, forums and message boards, social networks, wikis, virtual worlds, social bookmarking, tagging and news, writing communities, digital storytelling and scrapbooking, and data, content, image and video sharing, podcast portals, and collective intelligence.  

From a marketing standpoint however, the history of Social Media probably looks more like this:

Connect - Cultivate - Convert | A Model For The New Marketing Paradigm

Connect Cultivate Convert 

This deck reflects an attempt to present a simple to consume and communicate model of how to approach the complex new marketing environment. Of course many experienced marketers will know much of what is contained here, but they may not have a simple way to think about it holistically, or more importantly to communicate to those less sophisticated than themselves. With that in mind we offer up Connect, Cultivate and Convert, a model for the new marketing. 
 

Who is Goodbuzz?

FIGHTING FOR AUDIENCE PASSION AND LOYALTY IN A FRAGMENTED LANDSCAPE OF DISTRIBUTION OPTIONS. 

Goodbuzz Inc. is an independently owned advertising agency founded in 2008, with long-term business relationships based on exceeding our clients' expectations. Our focus has always been the work, the people who create it, and the people we create it for.
 

We are a community of artists, strategists and technologists, bound together in a quest to engage and inspire consumers.  After more than 20 years of entertainment marketing, we understand the power of story to influence and motivate consumers, and create an emotional connection between them and your brand.

Goodbuzz help brands create and capture value from emerging trends in technology, society and the workplace. We prototype the future and believe the best way to predict it is to create it. More on Goodbuzz and it's principles.

KRISPY KREME'S "DOUGHNUTS ARE BAD FOR YOU" AD

Copywriting is writing copy (text) for the purpose of advertising or marketing and is intended to influence beliefs.   Some of it is great, much of it meh.  When done properly it stimulates and stirs the emotions. In 1983 Ogilvy wrote, “I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.” It’s still true today. 

Every once in a while we stumble upon truly great copywriting.  Here is one such example from our friends at Krispy Kreme; a clear and calculated response to the widespread push-back on the dangers of eating unhealthy snacks like Donuts.

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Nike's Emotional Branding Wins Hearts

We are surrounded with so much information today it's a miracle that any messages break through, but Nike's strategy (via Wieden+Kennedy) of creating emotional, empowering ads and large viral pyramids that leverage the Nike brand and message content is one of the most effective emotional branding examples in the marketing world today. Their customer loyalty is astronomical, all thanks to the masterful application of emotional branding and the centuries-old storytelling archetype of Heroism. 

Nike Advertising and Emotional Branding

Nike's brand inspires fervent customer loyalty around the world.  This is primarily because Nike's advertising uses the emotional branding technique of archetypes in its advertising – more specifically, the story of the Hero. It’s an age old tale, a tale of a hero pitted against a great foe, and after a great struggle, emerging triumphant. 

Building Loyalty + The Hero Archetype

Nike's advertising isn’t the only group that uses the Hero archetype to inspire customer loyalty. Many other companies use this emotional branding technique to great effect. In most cases, the foe is external. The most common story of the hero is that of an underdog, a man of humble origins setting out to defeat a greater evil – one far more powerful than he – and, against all odds, emerging triumphant.  As long as there is a clearly identified enemy and a clearly identified hero, the emotional branding can begin. 

Brand Strategy

Nike's advertising takes the common hero story and turns it on its head. Instead of inspiring customer loyalty by singling out an external enemy, it pulls out the stops and focuses on an internal foe – our laziness. Nike knows just how often we battle with our lazy side. Every morning when that alarm goes off and it’s still totally dark outside, the battle begins. When we choose how long to run, the battle continues. This is how Nike's marketing uses emotional marketing to inspire customer loyalty. They know that while some people may identify with an external foe, all people identify with an internal one.

Nike's strategy resonates because laziness is a universal foe and someone we can all hate, the "consumer is the brand hero". In one way or another, we are all the hero of our own story.  Nike's marketing has long since identified that feeling – and used it to inspire timeless customer loyalty.  They succeed by showing people how to dream bigger and live better. Help them to care more, enable them to do great things and inspire them to be the hero of their story.  Just watch the video below...

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The Society of Digital Agencies Report | Volume 2_ 2013

The SoDA Report (Volume 2, 2013) from SoDA

Top 10 Ways To Improve Digital Experiences

Before jumping in with fixes, companies must determine the best opportunities
To find improvement opportunities that will have the biggest impact on the customer experience and business metrics, companies need to start their digital improvement projects by analyzing web and app analytics, operational data, and multiple forms of customer research.

Great digital experiences don’t happen By accident - They must Be actively designed
Firms need to take a rigorous approach to digital improvement projects. This
means learning -- and then sticking to -- a user-centered design process that includes research, analysis, ideation, prototyping, and testing. Digital teams that need help in this area can tap into a variety of external research and design agencies.

Digital experience improvement projects must support established Business objectives
To maximize digital budgets and ensure ongoing funding, companies need to deliver web, mobile, and tablet touch-points that align with core brand attributes and support business objectives such as cost savings, revenue generation, and loyalty building. Key to this work: creating a unified customer experience.

♔ SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDIES [GB_V90]

GE and Volvo share their Twitter hashtag strategies – Digiday

Honda has earned the Best Use of Pinterest award for their #pintermission campaign that gave pinners $500 to actually make the stuff they pin - Ragan

NIVEA has created an interactive YouTube video of a couple on a disastrous date that fans can share on Facebook and Twitter - Adverblog

Ford explains how they're asking fans to help create a social campaign for their Fiesta Movement - Forbes

Burberry is letting their fans tweet #madefor to see their new personalization feature from London Fashion Week - BrandChannel

The U.S. Army is sharing their social media handbook, including the "Do and Don't" checklist for Facebook and Twitter – B2C

Pizza Hut came to the rescue for #LastMinuteLovers on Twitter who needed a gift for Valentine's Day - Examiner

Macy's is promoting National Heart Health Month by giving to the American Heart Association through their social media sites - Businesswire

Pantene asked their fans to tweet #WantThatHair while celebrities walked down the red carpet during this year's Academy Awards to get tips on how to achieve their style - DailyMake

Taco Bell announced their Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco on Twitter with a Vine video - WebproNews

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