Tag Archives: digital influencers

Welcome to the emojincey ward

1 Mar

emojincey ward

The digital sphere can be complicated for marketers and business operators, trying to keep up with all the new features social media is offering as well as apps and other whizz bang offerings.

I use the term whizz bang because when you really look at a lot of these innovations, they offer the excitement of the new. And we have been trained to upgrade from old to new even when the new features aren’t that special.

In the olden days marketing was relatively simple.

  • Create the message
  • Match it to your target market
  • Choose the best media option
  • Run the ad or the campaign.

Now targeting requires sorting through many variables to do with lifestyle and behaviours.

Ads or posts are run and testing is conducted using the analytics.

Often we are advised to run separate campaigns to ‘test’ the efficacy and effectiveness.

We are told to be strangely unique to cut through and to tell stories not to just sell.

TV channels have been replaced by internet influencers who command vast audiences.

It’s so un marketing in the traditional sense where a product or service was promoted to a market.

OK … that’s simplistic.

And there’s likes and follows. Shorthand ticks of approval from our ‘community.”

Other shorthands include the emoji.

now featuring an array of cute visages with stand out emotions. And gifs.

Like it or not, we are in the age of shorthand … short attentions span.

Ultra convenience services such as UBER Eats and Netflix stop people socialising.

But people are people and will no doubt get bored with social which is why they have to keep changing and updating and adding features.

Great advertising is still about the creative. Cut through only occurs when people stop and take notice.

So let’s open the emojincey ward where people are people and emotions aren’t a quick flick, insert and like.

emoji image:  

Pioneers of Digital Influence

13 Apr

The Smart Set

The Smart Set was a magazine that was founded in 1900 for and about New York’s social elite, The magazine evolved into an expression of popular modernism and it’s heyday went from 1913 through 1922.

It had a literary side publishing some of the best authors of the day (including Joyce and Conrad) and gave F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby) his start.

Subtitled “A Magazine of Cleverness” The Smart Set never gave up its aim to entertain, to win a large audience, and to make money through advertising.

Thoroughly modern

The magazine covers (see above) are images depicting modern women. The flappers and ‘it’ girls who made the news and social pages of the day through there ‘shocking’ displays that went against the moral norms of the day. They smoked and drank and used colourful language. In that way they were liberated some might argue. But that’s not the point.

Digital influencers and advertising dollars

These were the pioneers of today’s online digital influencers who garner huge crowds of followers just by posting a pic or a little message on their instagram pages. They are trend setters (sometimes) or trend followers but they have built a brand image around themselves by understanding what their ‘tribe’ want, need and often just aspire to.

And when they attract large numbers of followers, that translates into advertising dollars.

So things haven’t changed that much – just the mediums.

and the hipsters just look like Ned Kelly.