Tag: influencers

Live Nation Helps Brand Sponsors Find Social Influencers Among Concert-Goers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Live Nation is leveraging Wi-FI and geofencing at event venues to help brands discover social influencers at concerts in real time. For example, one unspecified brand sponsor recently used Live Nation’s program to scout female fans with over 5,000 Twitter followers at the Music Midtown festival in Atlanta. Those selected were invited via social media to a branded selfie photo area that also doubled as a VIP viewing area.

With a multi-year partnership with IT solution provider Cisco, Live Nation is implementing strong Wi-Fi connectivity at ten of its venues with 20 more planned for 2017, which will provide free Wi-Fi service to event attendees while also enable it to gather real-time data on attendees that can be useful for optimizing the event experience, venue operation, and ad targeting.

What Brands Should Do
This example showcases a new development in influencer recruitment that brands may incorporate in their fan marketing strategies. Leveraging smartphones and social media as touchpoints to reach targeted consumers in venues brings a digital dimension to event-based marketing, and the data this program gathers can also be used for future marketing and retargeting purposes. More brands sponsoring Live Nation events should explore such capabilities to amplify their brand messages in real time.

 

Source: AdAge

How Brands Can Better Utilize Snapchat’s Snapcodes And Influencers

Posted on by Richard Yao

What Happened
Snapchat is offering brands a new way to engage with consumers in the real world as it debuts an ad format called Snap to Unlock. Brands can work with Snapchat to create branded “Snapcodes,” QR codes shaped like the Snapchat logo, to put on billboards, on products, or in stores for interested customers to scan to gain access to extra content. Universal Pictures is among the first to test this new ad unit to promote its new movie The Girl On the Train.

In related news, brands can now use Snaplytics, a social analytics startup dedicated to Snapchat, to identify and track how their influencer campaigns are doing by using their new Influencer Tracking Platform. The tool is designed to provide marketers with data on how many Snapchat users saw an influencer ad and for how long, helping brands to adjust their campaigns accordingly.

What Brands Need To Do
Both products should be of great use to brands trying to reach customers on Snapchat in ways besides conventional video ads. Snap To Unlock offers brands a chance to bring mobile-based interactivity to their out-of-home campaigns or product packaging, and Snaplytics’ Influencer Tracking Platform provides brands with a measurement tool to better understand their sponsored influencer content performance.

 

Sources: AdAge & Realwire

 

Twitter Opens Up Moments To Brands And Influencers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter is set to open up its Moments feature to a select set of brands, influencers, and publishers, allowing them to create their own tweet collections. Besides Twitter’s own editorial team, Moments was previously only available to a limited group of media partners such as Buzzfeed and the MLB. Now, Budweiser, Allure Magazine, and activist DeRay McKesson are among the first to try out the new tool. Twitter says it will gradually roll out the feature to all users in coming months, but will continue to rely on its editorial team to determine which ones get published.

What Brands Need To Do
By opening up the Moments feature to brands and influencers, Twitter is making yet another tool available for marketers to capture Twitter users’ attention. Moments allows brands to string a series of rich-media tweets together to craft an engaging narrative, and brands seeking to reach customers on Twitter should consider giving it a try or working with an influencer to push out brand messages.

 

Source: VentureBeat

How Mercedes-Benz Is Working With Social Influencers To Battle Ad Avoidance

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In a bid to reach a younger demographic, Mercedes-Benz has been working with a number of social influencers to promote its brand. With the launch of a content initiative named “MB Photo Pass” earlier this year, the luxury car maker has been working closely with content creators and around 25 influencers to craft branded and sponsored content across various social channels including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, and YouTube. Besides the usual narrative featuring fancy vehicles and extreme sports, Mercedes also branched out and created its first 360-degree video that featured an emotional storyline.

What Brands Need To Do
As consumer attention becomes increasingly fragmented and the subpar mobile ad experience drives many users to use ad-blockers, it is becoming more and more difficult for brands to reach their desired audience via traditional media channels. Therefore, brands should take a cue from Mercedes’s influencer efforts and be willing to explore new forms of advertising such as sponsored or branded content, as well as new media formats such as VR and 360-degree video, to circumvent consumers’ growing ad aversion and pique their interest.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer attention, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Digiday

 

FameBit Partners With Shopify To Help Influencers Set Up Shop

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Social influencer marketplace FameBit has partnered up with ecommerce platform Shopify to make it easier for the 31,000 social media stars in Famebit’s network to set up their own digital storefronts. This will allow social influencers to sell their own merchandise directly to fans or form partnerships with existing brands to co-create branded products. Besides access to Shopify VIP, an exclusive service that provides infrastructure and customer management support for online stores, Shopify will also offer some ecommerce tools, such as embeddable buy buttons, to help them cross-promote their online stores across various digital channels.

What Brands Need To Do
This deal highlights the growing importance of influencer marketing in ecommerce as it turns more influencers into online retailers with a built-in audience. As more and more brands seek partnerships with social influencers in order to reach younger generations that are shunning traditional media channels, this FameBit-Shopify deal spells new opportunities for brands to collaborate with the next generation of celebrities.

For more information on why brands should leverage partnerships with social influencers and content creators to reach new audiences, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Marketing Dive