Millenials, Branding and Social Media

This week's topic on the use of branding and social media was very interesting to me. I enjoyed reading Business Insider's Fundamentals of Personal Branding. I have my own website vinkankel.com and I believe all of the points addressed in the article were informative and will definitely help me in the future. This spoke volumes to me:

"What you mean must fulfill a specific unmet need in a well-defined target audience, AND be perceived as special and valuable." - Business Insider

I think it is especially hard to create a brand in 2017. In the past media had gatekeepers and used formal communication. Social media uses grapevine communication, through reposting, RSS feeds and the ability to share you see more brands than ever before. Since shared content is very popular, brands are distorting information by cramming their advertisements into 140 characters or less for their Twitter audiences. New media uses informal communication and has diminished what appeared to once be an elite hierarchy of journalists, new casters and commentators. Now media can be created by practically anyone. Most millennials cannot recall the last time they have read a newspaper or watched their local news station. According to journalism.org, the newspaper industry has dropped 20,000 positions or a thirty-nine percent decline in the last twenty years. Digital sales make up twenty-five percent of all advertising sales. Social media is at our fingertips twenty-four hours a day. Social media travels at record breaking speeds and is almost given to you simultaneously while browsing the internet if you subscribe to updates.

Millennials are under the influence of others 87% of the day and not being logged in to a social networking site can cause detachment issues. A survey from Ipsos OTX, stated that users feel as if they are missing out on coupons and discounts when they are not logged into a social network. Consumers follow their favorite brands on Facebook and Twitter to receive updates and alerts on the latest promotions companies are offering. Other reasons for staying connected included contests, interesting content, creating content that others will share, answering emails and messages and responding to content posted on their page. Twitter launched Twitter business to strategically drive traffic to users post. Facebook offers an ad service which guarantees a reached audience based on the amount of money you are willing to spend. Engaging with millennials over social media is lucrative.

In recent year’s brands have changed their approach and target audience to gain revenue. October 12, 2016 the Coca Cola Company’s Sprite brand, released the Lebron James #WannaSprite campaign. The #WannaSprite campaign latest viral commercial stars rapper Lil Yachty. Lil Yachty has red hair, wears gold teeth and emerged as an independent artist. The commercial features Lil Yachty rapping at a piano and explaining why he enjoys Sprite. Within a day the Lil Yachty commercial received 1 million YouTube views. Sprite also launched their limited edition hip-hop cans which featured lyrics from 2Pac, Missy Elliot and J.Cole. The cans also include a Twitter hashtag #Obeyyourthirst. Sprite is number ninety-eight on Forbes most valuable brands list and is valued at 6.2 billion dollars.

Burger King’s marketing strategies changed in an attempt to take over the digital space. Under the Be your Way Campaign Burger King made its presence on Twitter more known. Burger King tweets urban music and caters to the demographics of Twitter’s most frequent users. Burger King chose to use social media to cut down on advertising cost. Tastemakers and critics started to take heed to Burger King’s strategic internet marketing schemes. Burger King’s smartest and most profitable marketing strategy occurred on May 2015. Burger King used a photo shopped picture of Burger King’s mascot “The King” alongside Floyd Mayweather and Justin Bieber during the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight and posted the photo to Twitter. Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight took place at MGM studios in Las Vegas, Nevada and was the biggest boxing match in the past decade. The fight was commercial free. Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight had a 4.4 million viewers, within hours the King, Mayweather and Justin Bieber were alongside each other and the picture was all over the internet. Burger King developed a knack for social media advertising and is known for its outlandish approach by millennials who heavily indulge in surfing the net. Be your way campaign is one of the best digital campaign’s in its own right.

Brands have been using celebrity endorsement for decades. Entertainment has always grabbed the attention of people from all social, economic and ethnic backgrounds. Yet modern day communication cannot be measured, labeled and classified easily. The way we communicate has changed throughout the years, communication can be viewed from a critical perspective.

Entertainment has also been used by brands on social media to push equality. Ben and Jerry’s ice cream latest flavor “Empowermint” was created in support of the black lives matter movement. The campaign was posted on all social platforms. Ben and Jerry’s website featured a press release explaining why Empowermint was created. According to Nielson Reviews African Americans ages 17-35 are Americas biggest consumers. Ben and Jerry’s may simply care about equality of all people but supporting racial minorities, an influx of women and people with vast sexual orientations has worked in their favor. Ben and Jerry’s icecream I dough I dough, received 27,691 likes and 12,354 shares. Corporations are attempting to bridge the digital gap by appeasing different demographics.  

General Mills, one of the country’s largest food companies, last year revamped its frozen pizza brand, Totino’s, with black packaging and spicy flavors in an effort to appeal to millennials. The new Totino’s Bold products are marketed with entertaining zombie videos on YouTube instead of the picture of the matronly chef Rose Totino clad in red-and-white checkered apron that was used on newspaper ads in the 1980s, when the target consumer was baby boomer mothers. (Searchy).

I think brands are using less slogans and more tactics. Some brands have solidified their target audience and their slogans are known everywhere. Some brands dont even use slogans. I believe branding is completely unorthodox and up to the company in 2017. I think that consistency is most important. Sticking to web videos, celebrity endorsements, or whatever works best for the company is the only tactic that will work. 

Crowdsouring... Everyones doing it!!!

I began to look through my emails and noticed companies bombarding me with advertisements. Most of the advertisements are actually things I would be interested in, but since I am an email hoarder and I have over 10,000 unread emails I tend to neglect every email that is not from a person.

Paypal recently sent me an email with the title "Fashion for everyone on your list". When I opened the email I noticed there were screenshots of shoes Ive purchased in the past and also a few pair of heels that I may like.

                                            
If I told my grandmother Paypal knew what sort of shoes I liked, I'm sure she'd say it was an act of big brother. But as a strategic communicator, I'm aware its simply crowdsourcing. I personally don't know if crowdsourcing is the most ethical thing to do, but if you're anything like me and don't like doing the dirty work of finding new things to purchase or even watch on Netflix, crowdsourcing is amazing.

Our wonderful friends at YouTube, have changed society by using crowdsouring. If you're familiar with internet coding, you would know that the feed YouTube uses is enabled by PHP coding. The most relevant videos appear on the front page of YouTube. If youre signed into your YouTube account videos you've watched or may be interested in watching will also appear throughout YouTube's feed. I watch YouTube for hours and stumble across tons of music videos that are pretty neat  and do it yourself tutorials, because that's what I'm into!
                                        
I cant imagine how life would be without my computer, cellphone and tablet keeping tabs on me and my interests. Honestly I hate the thought of having to remember web addresses. Since crowdsourcing is totally convieient, I can simply type in keywords and based on my interests many sites will pull up videos or sources that Ive seen before or are very similar to what  I am looking for.

Digital Democracy : Women dominate the internet

  Women are avid Internet users. Women are believed to use social media about 10 percent more than male users. Women occupy a larger proportion of time on the Internet and this is steadily increasing over time. Currently about three quarters of women (74%) use social networking sites. A growing proportion of older women are engaging in social activities on the Web. It seems that once they discover it, they embrace it quickly and their usage rivals that of younger women. This particular fact stood out to me because me mom and her friends love Facebook. Photo-sharing sites are most popular among younger women,but women of all ages have embraced it as a key component of the social networking experience. Women are believed to use Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram more than male users. Whilethis may seem like an unbelievable conclusion, since women have had online parity for the past ten years; many advertisers target women’s magazines, celebrity gossip and baby sites in order to gain revenue. This is very true because I use a lot of online magazines. My favorite online magazines for women are OnlineWeekly.com and Ebony.com. Women are actually more engaged than their male counterpart. I believe this too be very true since I always see women share more ideas on social networks. On Instagram women take “selfies” a lot more often than men do. I believe this is because women on the Internet want attention and the approval of their peers. 

As a woman I always feel empowered by being informed about impressive women. I often look at Forbes.com to find out about women who are contributing to society. I think social media and technology shed light on many issues that were once buried inside of magazines. I think that technology has also allowed women to express themselves like their male counterparts. 

Social media has done a lot for the sake of women’s rights. Women are still looked at as inferior throughout the world. Social media has made many issues pertaining to women’s rights widespread within a short period of time, which was hard before Internet access.  Our voices have been recognized through blogging and our contribution to some of the top web news articles. Since women, in my opinion, spend more time on social media their voices are hear around the world. This gives women the right to express their feelings about subjects that the male dominated world has expressed their concerns about. As apercentage of global Internet users, women are still slightly inthe minority but are catching up quickly due to their involvement and voicing their opinions on the web. Differences are most common in developing countries where were women are not allowed to voice their opinions, in many developed countries, the split is about equal. However, once online, women are more connected than men. 

Regardless of how much of an influence that you believethat women have on the internet, women are primarily today’scommunicators, networkers and facilitators, it is very clear that women are embracing social networking in a way that men havechosen not to. The rise of social networking has encouraged women to engage in many different online activities, such as photo sharing, gaming, video viewing and tutorials. All of these activities attract women users, despite the stereotypical beliefs that only males like gaming and sports. Social retail, in my opinion, is probably the biggest and may be a new revolution;many women have style blogs and also sale their own products online. Cell phones also allow women to buy things with just a click of their fingers.  Women tend to shop more online not asurprise. However, how and where they shop, as well as what they shop for, is notably different than men. Women drive adisproportionate amount of online spending. In the U.S.market,women makeup just under half of the Internet population but generate 58 percent of e-commerce dollars. 

​The U.S currently has the largest e-commerce market in theworld; you can find anything you can imagine online, big.cartel.com allows you to buy anything its members want to sale. Retail usage is category-specific and extends from sitevisitation to shopping to buying online. 

Savvy retailers are translating the social aspect of shopping tothe online world to capitalize on two key aspects of women’s Internet usage. There has been a rise in online boutiques because of the big.cartel website. Many women use Instagram to promote their big.cartel.com boutiques. The most common things sold on big.cartel.com are hair extensions, club wear and makeup. Women clearly shop more on the Internet than men do. Women spend more time on websites; I spend a lot of money on aliexpress.com and eBay.com. I think a lot of women like to keep up with trends and it is very hard to turn down a sale.Whenever I see an online sale or online discount I know that it will beat any in store promotion.

I stay update on trends by viewing what women are wearing all across the globe. I also use Google to search what to wear and what not to wear to any event. I searched in Google “should I wear a pants suit or a dress to a job interview” and different pictures came up with women who were wearing both, I also seen what was appropriate to where either article of clothing. Community and Lifestyle sites, traditionally aimed atwomen, continue to attract this audience, especially with parenting, food and home-related content. Health sites continue the trend of attracting primarily female audiences. Women havedifferent preferences when it comes to online search. Inparticular women like using Bing.

I have noticed women take part in sports discussions online as well. I always read my Twitter timeline to stay update on sporting events that are occurring. Just last week I saw that the World Cup was taking place. Many women commented on how cute the players were rather than really watching the sport itself but there are plenty of women who actually spectate the game. The Internet has allowed women to prove many social norms and stereotypes to be inaccurate. Women to can enjoy sporting events. The rise of online solitaire, card and board games hasgenerated a new audience of video gamers: women. Womentend to consume less video overall than men but show more of apropensity for YouTube. Topic areas that are male mainstays inthe offline world–automotive, sports and some aspects offinance are also male-heavy online. There are, however, some areas of finance where women outpace men. And, women are actively engaged in areas that are typically associated with males, such as adult content and gambling.