Business Critical: Arby’s Wins Social Grammys, Facebook Paper
By Flying Hippo
Business Critical is our weekly collection of what’s new, exciting, and insightful for business leaders from the world of the web, marketing, social media, and more.
Arby’s Tweet Goes Viral, Another Win for Real-time Brand Engagement
After last year’s Super Bowl winners included Audi and Oreo for their timely content about the game’s black out, major brands have been antsy for more opportunities to respond to real-time cultural events with witty messages.
Hey @Pharrell, can we have our hat back? #GRAMMYs
— Arby’s (@Arbys) January 27, 2014
This week, Arby’s made their entrance into the ring with a wise-crack about rapper/producer Pharrell’s hat during the Grammys. Their tweet — which pointed out the resemblance the hat had to their logo — was an instant viral hit. Most media sources have declared Arby’s the “winner” of the Grammys. This just shows that with the real-time communication media of today, brands are just expected to be places of business, but also social commentators that are actively involved in the pop canon. Is your brand part of the culture conversation? Marketing Land compared the Arby’s tweet to last year’s Super Bowl victory by Oreo.
Shazam Will Jump from Screen to Social
Looking to the next big TV event, song-identifying app Shazam has revealed that it will use advanced Facebook retargeting technology to enable advertisers to track consumers who use the Shazam app to identify songs and then re-market to them later on Facebook. Despite its creepy connotations, the technology is pretty cool and it shows how integrated marketing across media has become in the digital age. Ad Age detailed the strategy behind this move and pontificates on its expected effectiveness.
Time Warner’s Share of Pay TV subscribers on the Slide
Statista released a new study this week that projects Time Warner cable’s share in the pay TV market to fall from 12.8% in 2008 to just 10.4% by 2018. While this is only a market share study and not necessarily indicative of the entire industry, it raises questions: How much longer will cable TV be considered a dominant medium for major advertisers? Our predication is that the next few years will see a major exodus from TV advertising as brands learn to master real-time marketing and reach the same audiences through other (read: cheaper) channels. Statista’s full study is for subscribers only, but you can access the overview on their website.
Facebook’s Paper Looks to Shake up Mobile Content
Is Zuckerberg’s team throwing its social media app out the window to pursue custom-curated content? It may seem that way. Facebook announced this week the release of a new app, Paper, which is essentially a dressed-up RSS feed that displays new content based on interests and social intelligence (built on Facebook connections, of course.) This may come as a surprise, but it seems to be a long-term play for Facebook to pivot into more than just a social network and into the larger content curation market. It’s especially important for brands as Facebook has ramped up mobile advertising as of late. Mobile ads now account for more than half of the company’s revenue and we can’t expect them to leave those dollars on the table. Instead, it’s likely that they’ll launch a new ad unit that lives within Paper specifically. Watch for that in the future. Learn more about Facebook’s Paper app right.
