Morning Update: SK-II’s marriage market takeover; Facebook to pay publishers to live-stream; 5 Instagram tips from Mercedes-Benz
Creativity Online: China’s Single Women Confront Stereotypes In Moving Spot from P&G
In China, single women over age 25 are cruelly referred to as “leftover women.” They’re under intense pressure from their families to get married, and they’re often subjected to unthinking or hurtful judgments. Such as this: “We always thought our daughter had a great personality,” one mother says in a new video spotlighting the issue. “She’s just average-looking. Not too pretty. That’s why she’s left over.”
Ad Week: Facebook to pay publishers for video
Facebook has created a video hub that will roll out in the coming weeks for its flagship mobile app. According to a TechCrunch story, a button for the hub will receive prominent placement in the Facebook app and often highlight live video—though it will offer recorded clips as well.
TechCrunch also reported that news publishers will be paid to stream live video via the hub instead of their own websites. There will be a live group videos feature, and marketers will be able to glean stats about how many people watched it live, as well as mine other engagement metrics.
AdWeek: 5 Instagram Tips From Mercedes-Benz, Which Gets Superb Engagement on the Platform
Follow Mercedes-Benz on Instagram, and you’ll soon learn two things: It posts several times a day across the brand’s properties, and people eat it up. For instance, the carmaker’s global account, with 4.9 million followers, routinely gets between 50,000 and 100,000 likes per post, while posts via the brand’s U.S. Instagram handle—with 1 million followers—regularly achieve more than 10,000 likes.
With Instagram implementing an algorithm, some marketers are worried about still being able to gain that kind of traction on the platform. But Mark Aikman, general manager of marketing services at Mercedes-Benz USA, isn’t among them.
AdWeek: Sweden Just Got Its Own Phone Number. A Funny Thing Happened When We Called It
In 2012, VisitSweden launched a unique tourism campaign online. It handed off the country’s official Twitter handle, @Sweden, to ordinary Swedes—and let them post more or less whatever they liked. Very quickly there were problems with provocative posts, but the country—convinced that transparency had more upsides than downsides—stuck with the “Curators of Sweden” program, and it continues today. (It was also widely celebrated in the ad industry, winning the Cyber Grand Prix at Cannes in 2012 for agency Volontaire.)
Mumbrella Asia: Digital marketing agency AdAsia Holdings launches in Singapore
An advertising company using the name AdAsia has launched in Singapore. Founded by former MicroAd executive Kosuke Sogo and Otohiko Kozutsumi, formerly with smartphone ad network startup Nobot, AdAsia Holdings is a digital marketing agency with services ranging from digital strategy, mobile and social to video production.
On the company’s website, AdAsia sets out its ambition to be the “No.1 advertising company in Asia and the world” and, in CEO Kosuke Sogo welcome note, aims to be listed on the stock exchange by 2019.
Ad Age: Why the Wall Is Crumbling Between Sales, Marketing
As VP of e-commerce, digital and data for Unilever North America, Doug Straton has done deals with grocery service Instacart where Unilever pays the $5.99 to $7.99 delivery tab or provides discounts when people buy its products. Recently, he’s used an Instacart “hero images” program that optimizes Unilever content for mobile advertising.
Mr. Straton is happy with immediate results, but the longer-term effect may be much broader. He’s doing work that would have been divided among two or three marketing functions in the old, offline marketplace: the sales department handling store promotions, a consumer promotion manager for coupons and a brand manager signing off on ad content.
The Observer: Mashable Announces Strategy Shift, Layoffs
Mashable is undergoing a major reorganisation that will shift its focus away from news, founder and CEO Pete Cashmore announced today. The restructuring comes a week after the company announced that it had raised $15 million in a funding round to amp up its video content, and means a round of layoffs.
“As our stories now live on multiple platforms, it’s doubly important that everything we create reflects that voice and ethos. That’s why we took the tough decision to move away from covering world news and politics as standalone channels. Instead, we will focus on telling these stories from a digital angle,” Mr. Cashmore wrote in a staff memo that he posted on Linkedin.
