#digitalcomms

Since the emergence of ‘digital comms’ in political engagement and activism, the widespread distribution of campaigning and issues for change has grown exponentially. No longer do those who feel submissive about the governments actions, have not a say but are now at the front line of making a stand. The use of mobile devices and social media has lead to the rapid distribution of awareness and an increased number of participation in the act towards change.

Assistant professor Brooke Foucault Welles argues the introduction of ‘counter publics’ within ‘digital activism’, which resemble groups of people from subordinate social groups that don’t fit within the ‘public sphere’. Importantly, these digital citizens “advance alternate narratives” (Foucault Welles, 2019) that contribute to a larger discussion around the stories that matter. We see this sense of community online through the use of ‘hashtag publics’ which correlate information and make it easily accessible for action to be taken.

There’s no doubt you would have come across these familiar hashtags during your research online, #BlackLivesMatter and the #Metoo movement. It’s important to understand that a large proportion of these digital campaigns have been as a result of the network behind these ‘counter publics’. These online platforms have provided an environment where stories can be told with shared values of trust and a sense of normality. It helps promote empathy with the discussions that are being held and acts as a pivot for action.

A more recent example of this rise in ‘counter publics’ is the unfortunate event of death of George Floyd, who was murdered at the hands of an inconsiderate and sinister force, the police. Too often then not we hear about the tragic deaths caused by police brutality, and their over use of power. The #icantbreathe hashtag has been circulating the internet in the last 24 hours as people from all walks of life attempt to raise awareness and demand action. In times of crisis like this, digital comms also becomes a playground for influencers and public figures to reach a wider spread audience about the issue.

LeBron James is just one of the large names that has taken part in challenging the conventions of the government and asking for people to participate in ‘digital activism’. 

LeBron James Instagram:

As you can see in the image above, James presents a split photo with the police officer that murdered George Floyd on the left and NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick who famously kneeled during the American anthem to protest against racial indifference on the right. This particular act of digital campaigning resonates with those who are suffering injustice and helps build a shared voice.

Furthermore, James follows up with an included caption that says “Do you understand NOW!!??!!??” and the hashtag #StayWoke. Both of these statements reinforce the message of continuing to stay aware and act in times of issues around discrimination.

This brings me to the question of whether this form of ‘digital activism’ can be used as government intervention o or even manipulation. Expanding on Kaepernick’s influence in the black lives matter campaign, the large sporting company Nike was at front end of controversy surrounding this matter. 

After releasing the “Dream Crazy” advertisement which featured Kaepernick and the slogan “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Just do it.” the protests began to follow. It even got the attention of the U.S. president Donald Trump who responded to the social activism as “I think it’s a terrible message and a message that shouldn’t be sent. There’s no reason for it.”. This highlights the government’s ignorance and authoritarian approach to dismissing real claims about societal injustice. However, as we have seen with other online movements, ‘digital activism’ is able to go “beyond the event horizon of immediate political inter-ventions” (Alvarez, Lauzon, Zaiontz, 2019) and help take effect the issue to a larger scale. 

References:

Alvarez N., Lauzon C., Zaiontz K. (2019) 'On Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: An Introduction'. In: Alvarez N., Lauzon C., Zaiontz K. (eds) Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times. Contemporary Performance InterActions. 

Foucault Welles PhD, B. (Academic). (2019).  Researching online activism using social network analysis [Streaming video]. Retrieved from SAGE Research Methods.

LeBron James, LeBron James Instagram Profile, accessed 28 May 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CAq3fpCgyve/. 

Samsung’s last online campaign, imagined by Leo Burnett Istanbul was described as epic. Indeed, the campaign had a viral impact and is a poetic and inspiring shot. By making the choice of concrete action, the brand has successfully engaged its community though an emotional and engaged video reminding us that a world without barriers is everyone’s dream.

This is the story they imagined: We are in Istanbul and Muaharrem steps out of his house with his sister. This young hearing-impaired man is expecting to live a day like any other, struggling to get across in society despite his handicap. Nevertheless, that day everybody in Muaharrem’s neighbourhood was to speak to him in sign language.

In order to promote their new call-centre for hearing impaired, Samsung and Leo Burnet conducted month long training sessions to set up this experience. Muaharrem has for sure lived an unforgettable moment and this moment has been shared with the online community.

This example shows once more how a concrete demonstration of action can be efficient for a brand to go viral. Emotions, compassion and empathy are always good ingredients to add in order to engage the audience. The #hearinghands has been used extensively on social media and the brands positive perception has been increased.

Let’s be honest, at one point or another we all have either worn Converse shoes or at least really wanted to. If not, well…this campaign will make you wish you did!

In order to celebrate the 100th birthday of the iconic Chuck Taylor All Star shoes, Converse decided to step up their game with a new digital campaign. To do so, the “Made By You” campaign aims to portray these unique sneakers through the consumers use of them.

Where did they get this idea? Well, the brand began to realize that people wearing Chucks always liked to customize and post photos of their ‘revamped’ shoes. So they thought, why not use their work of art to tell a story? Indeed, this was a clever way to grab people’s attention but more importantly, it truly encompassed the consumer to take an active part in the campaign by showcasing their creativity.

Even if the campaign was only launched yesterday, it has already gathered more than 200 portraits of worn and personalized Chucks from all around the world. The hashtag #ChuckTaylor was already trending and mentioned in 1,000 posts. Moreover, celebrities such as Patti Smith or the artist Andy Warhol (shown in picture above) have joined the crusade and engendered an even greater effervescence.

What is even more impressive is that the Nike-owned Converse brand has managed to create a real global experience by first encouraging consumers to share their custom-made shoes on social media. Then, they decided to “set up art installations and murals in cities across the globe, including New York, London and Shanghai”.

Finally, to wrap up the campaign, consumers in New York's Flatiron district will have the opportunity to experience a virtual reality by stepping into the shoes of famous artists through the Google Cardboard glasses. According to Ian Stewart, the global marketing VP at Converse, this side of the campaign “is designed to encourage people to tell the backstory of their Chucks”. He goes on by saying that ‘Made By You’ “isn't a media campaign where we're shouting to get people's attention" but rather “a bridge to get people to show what they've done."

In the end, the success of the “Made By You” campaign can be attributed to the combination and implementation of two social strategies: customization and visual storytelling. 

If you’re still not convinced of the power of these iconic shoes, then you got it all wrong. 

Sources:

http://digiday.com/brands/converse-celebrates-100-years-chucks-made/

http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/converse-breaks-made-campaign-chuck-taylors/297320/

You might have noticed Instagrams’videos are now looping, without having to press play over and over again, like on Vine. And that is good news for brands : it provides them with new possibilities to be creative ; and users will be more likely to watch videos several times. Gap is one of the first brands to take advantage of the opportunity, and has launched a new microseries on the 300 million users platform. For those who do not use it, the campaign will also be broadcasted on Facebook and YouTube.

  “The weirdest love story ever Instagrammed”

 The concept of this new campaign relies on Gap’s marketing tagline, “Dress Normal”. The brand explained the series will tell the story of “the burgeoning romance between Slate and Dano as they navigate chance encounters, first dates, and moody spring weather in the hope of finding their perfect fit.” The series will star actors like Paul Dano (12 Years a Slave, Little Miss Sunshine), and Jenny State (Obvious Child), both adorned in clothes and accessories from the brand’s upcoming spring collection.

 This new campaign is in accordance with Gap’s new brand image. Indeed the brand has been suffuring in the last few years, as its clothes were seen as practical basics, but dismissed as boring. Gap is now celebrating the “Lived-In” concept, which aims to promote the laidback style coming from our favorite lived-in pieces of clothing, and has also opened a new concept store in Manhattan which features its classics in a much cooler space. The brand is thus trying to elevate its image back to its past glory.

 Looping videos, opening up new horizons for advertising

 Gap has paid to sponsor the 12-part series, named “Spring is weird”, on Instagram. The platform started serving its first video ads late 2014, and all the brands will certainly be pleased to see that sponsored videos now continue to play. Indeed Michael Kelly, social media manager for Red Vines said that “with the success that Tumblr has had with GIFs and Twitter with Vine, it's been proven that there's something mesmerizing about the loop feature”.

 Gap’s global leader of consumer engagement, media strategy and brand partnerships, Tricia Nichols, said that "the nature of the videos is that you get something different every time you play them". "The story twists and turns, and there are little Easter eggs. So it's the perfect opportunity for video loops”.

  But innovative campaigns don’t always come without trouble

 Along with the microseries, Gap was planning on launching a new marketing campaign on Tinder, the most famous dating app. However Tinder nixed it, claiming it was violating its terms of service. Even if the app is considering putting ads on its free service, its soon to be realesed premium service will contain no paid marketing.

 If the campaign had been authorized, daters would have been able to come accross Gap's profile, with images of short messages like "You're invited to the pants party".

 This is a new example of how complex digital communication is. Brands have to keep up with the latest digital innovations, they have to use all these new possibilities to keep being relevant and innovative. Very often, these efforts are successful. However doing something that has never been done before also implies more risks, and sometimes, failure.

 In spite of this missed opportunity on Tinder, let’s hope this fresh and innovative campaign will help Gap better its image.

 Sources

http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/heres-why-brands-love-video-loops-instagram-just-launched-162776

http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/gap-looking-lovers-new-ad-tinder-162779

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/tinder-plus-the-paid-version-featuring-an-undo-button-and-more-arrives-in-u-s-next-month/#u5AR7d:UyS

3 ways to engage with your digital audience: #Schredyourex, Samsung & Porsche  

Digital Communication offers endless possibilities for companies to promote their products, services or values. Building a successful digital campaign, goes beyond just planning a creative story for an ad, and publishing it on every digital platforms the brand owns. That is, because digital is not about  mere awareness, it should be about engaging with an audience that will advocate for the brand, and thus echo in earned media.

How to engage an audience with your message, is no rocket science. One way of earning the attention, is by taking advantage of an occasion everyone will have an opinion about: The Superbowl, a power out (like Oreo did), or Valentines day. With Valentines day you can be sure of one thing: everyone is going to be quite vocal about it, lover's gonna love it, and haters are gonna hate hate hate.  That's what the agency McKinney did with the release of Shred your ex. For those of you who still feel hurt because of a past lover, shred your ex, enables you to hurt your ex, without actually risking going to jail. The concept is easy, all you have to do is to post a photo of your ex with the hasthtag #ShredYourEx, either on Instagram or Twitter, and go on the website http://shredyourex.tv/ to watch your ex cut into a million pieces by a digital paper shredder. Quite cathartic, right ?

Another way of doing so, is by touching the audience. Samsung recently launched an app to help autistic kids make eye contact. The app, cleverly named Look at me, was scientifically developed in partnership with researchers, doctors and engineers. Sure, not everyone is concerned, but the campaign the potential to move the purest of Apple shaped hearts. Also, a scientific breakthrough like this one, helps to reinforce samsung's slogan “designed for humans”, that was lacking in the storytelling department.

Sometimes, the best way to earn attention from your audience is to actually surprise them. For a Chinese campaign for Porsche,  Fred&Farid Group came up with a relatively strange idea that did wonders in terms of KPI. They were asked by Porsche to market a new 911 model as 'Benchmarking numbers', so they proceeded by releasing on the brand's Weibo account a series of encoded tweets, that instead of words, were composed of just numbers. To that, followed reactions from the brand's followers and opinion leaders, all wondering about the meaning behind those numbers. After that, Porsche invited their followers to decode those tweet using a special Weibo app, that could turn them into actual sentences, all related to the performance of the 911 model. Also, they invited their Chinese audience to use the app to encode their tweets. What they didn't expect is that that invitation to interact with the brand, would actually become a big Weibo trend, since users from all over China (where censorship is still a major issue), started to use the Porsche code to encrypt their tweets. During the campaign these tweets were viewed about 2,4 million times, and retweeted more that 9000 times, resulting of an increase of followers of 11%.  In total the overall media impression was a score of  85.726. 397.

Sources:

http://leblog.wcie.fr/2015/02/11/un-site-web-vous-aide-a-detruire-votre-ex-pour-la-saint-valentin/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wcie+%28Le+blog+de+W%26CIE%29

http://creativity-online.com/work/mckinney-shred-your-ex/38852

http://www.fastcocreate.com/3040494/a-new-samsung-app-helps-autistic-kids-make-eye-contact

http://www.frandroid.com/applications/259574_look-at-lapplication-samsung-aider-les-autistes