Business Critical: Tweet In Print, Buffer Analytics, Nissan In a Box
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.
Advertising gets a little meta
New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott is probably used to seeing his words in print and sprinkled into movie advertisements. But, he probably didn’t expect to see his tweets being used in the same way.
A full-page ad for the movie Inside Llewyn Davis ran in the New York Times this week that featured just the words of Scott, praising the film — specifically for its soundtrack. This is a gray area for advertisers and publishers, as some have pointed out that using another person’s tweet for “commercial” purposes without their consent may be in violation of Twitter’s terms of service. As of now, though, it seems there is no legal repercussions pending for CBS Films, the studio behind the movie.
But, this move does raise some interesting questions. As print and digital media continue to teeter toward their final balance, it will be interesting to see how advertisers combine and integrate them.
Read AdWeek’s coverage of the printed tweet ad.
Buffer beefs up account analytics
The social media management app, Buffer, announced new features this week that can be pretty useful for time-strapped teams trying to manage their social media accounts as efficiently as possible.
As one of our favorite tools, Buffer already makes it simple to queue up content for social media during normal Internet browsing. Now, they’ve also added Google Analytics integration and account growth tracking to their business-level services.
Read more on Buffer’s new features from MarketingLand.
Amazon ships new Nissans — in a box
Amazon recently ran a promotion with Nissan to sell the car maker’s new Versa Note online. This week, they delivered — literally.
Photos first popped up on Reddit showing a massive cardboard box, donning the well-known Amazon logo, being dropped off by truck to an apartment building. “What’s the largest item you can have shipped from Amazon? Because I think my neighbor just got it,” the post read.
It turns out, this was part of the fun. Amazon and Nissan plan to release a video of the quirky shipping method, but the cat is already out of the bag. For better or worse, there’s something to be learned here about the viral nature of public stunts like this in the age of the Internet.
Check our coverage of the big delivery.
Apple apps rake in more than $10 billion
A new press release from Apple revealed that their app store sold more than $10 billion in apps and digital content in 2013. Other reports suggest that the Android marketplace, Google Play, sold about half of that figure — making the native app/content industry some $15 billion annually.
Some reports are already calling for an explosion of branded apps and content in the coming years, and these numbers seem to jibe with those predictions. For brands, this may mean reevaluating existing mobile strategies to account for rising popularity of native applications. It also creates opportunity for brands to become more integrated with consumers lives through app functionality like push notifications.
See the full report on Apple’s app sales.
