Brands are flocking to it because it seems that no one pays attention to branded interactions on Facebook and Twitter anymore. Take this little nugget found on Sprout Social:

At 4.21%, Brand Engagement Rates Highest on Instagram

Last spring…analyzed more than 3 million user interactions with more than 2,500 brand posts on seven social networks. Unfortunately those brands achieved less than a 0.1 percent engagement rate on six out of the seven platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. 

Instagram posts, however, generated a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent. That means the app delivered brands 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter. Let’s look at a real life example of this difference. 

This week, Red Bull posted a photo of Lindsey Vonn on both Facebook and Instagram. Currently, the brand’s 45 million Facebook fans had liked the photo just about 20,000 times, while its 2.2 million Instagram followers had liked the photo nearly 70,000 times.

Now the fun part.

Artist Simona Bonafini reimagined Disney Instagram accounts for our favorite princesses and characters if they grew up in our world saturated by social media. Selfies, hookups, lunches and more. Here’s her take (click to enlarge any image)…

The post Disney Meets Instagram appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

“But, why?” you ask…

The answer is simple: Advertising was dying in 2007. I mean it was a bloodbath. Budgets were getting sliced like deli meat and the wise guys in accounting were cutting costs and the media departments took the big hits first. Add to that the advent of TiVo which touted the ability to never have to watch commercials again and you have the perfect storm needed to switch careers and fast!

Enter Jon Hamm as the perfect Don Draper and, BAM!, you have an anti-hero that made advertising cool again in the very first episode:

“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is OK.”

The success of the show — four straight Outstanding Drama Series Emmy Award win — spread to the vices of the show. Lucky Strike, the preferred cigarette, saw its global sales soar 44 percent in the same period. Draper’s favorite booze, Canadian Club, which had suffered seventeen years declining sales prior to Mad Men’s debut, suddenly were looking to pay dividends with a 4.3 percent annual growth. Talk to any bartender and he’ll tell you that cosmos are out and classic cocktails are in. Manhattans, Old Fashioneds and gimlets are suddenly popular again.

…and just like that, advertising was cool again.

Applicants at the big agencies in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago jumped, even tripled. Everyone wanted their share of creating the Great American Campaign. Agencies are now teaming with highly-specialized staff ready to solve any problem. It’s a tense, dog-eat-dog environment inside those agencies and yes, it leaves many on edge. Ever wonder sets them off? Adweek’s David Griner has the quintessential guide to treading lightly and the comments sure to provide spontaneous combustion:

• To a Copywriter: “I hope you didn’t make plans this weekend.”
• To an Art Director: “Hmm, it just needs, I don’t know, more pop, you know? Like, more (makes waving hand motions) crackle to it. Cleaner, maybe. Oh and these partner logos need to be added, and brand standards require they run green on black.”
• To a Creative Director: “Oh, you mean like the thing Old Spice did?”
• To an Account Executive: “Then tell the client they’ll just have to live with it.”
• To the CEO: “Did you see that big article today about [rival agency down the road]?”
• To the CFO: “So I was cleaning out my desk, and I found some invoices.”To a Media Planner: “Can’t we just take it from the discretionary budget? You guys always have a discretionary budget.”
• To a Media Director: “We’re thinking full-court press: Mobile, social, TV, outdoor, viral. We really need to get everything we can from this $125,000.”
• To a New Business Manager: “How important is this pitch?”
• To a Producer: “What do you mean we can’t license the song? The client already approved the rough cut. Just make it happen.”
• To a Project Manager: (On the way out the door) “Oh that? I didn’t get around to it.”
• To a Video Editor: “The client’s son is in film school and has some ideas. He says you can just send him the raw files if you’re not up to it.”
• To a Developer: “The client’s expecting this to work across all the platforms: mobile, Android, Facebook, .NET, watches … you know, all of it. Just keep it flexible and be mindful of the budget.”
• To a Production Director: “I’m pretty sure I would have noticed this kind of error on the proof. Surely they’ll redo the print run if you tell them it was their fault.”
• To a Strategist: “But I’m a millennial/boomer/shopper/parent, and that’s not how I feel about brand loyalty.”
• To the PR Director: “Then why didn’t sales go up?”
• To a Social Content Planner: “Man, I wish I got paid to play on Facebook and Twitter all day.”
• To the Receptionist: “You should smile more.”

NOTES ON THE SCORECARD:

SECRETARIES
Before you give your well-meaning, head-in-the-clouds secretary who doesn’t always seem to understand the subtleties of the workplace, some more grief consider this: Meredith Explains Why She’s Don Draper’s Best Secretary Ever!

WHY IT PAYS TO BE A JERK
Sneer at the customer. Keep your colleagues on edge. Claim credit. Speak first. Put your feet on the table. Withhold approval. Instill fear. Interrupt. Ask for more. And by all means, take that last doughnut. You deserve it.

NEED A WINGMAN?: Meet her now!
As designed, Invisible Girlfriend is meant to be a relationship cover. A crowdsourced significant other that lives amongst your text messages to fool others into thinking you’re spoken for. But use the service long enough, and it’s easy to take advantage of the fact that, at base level, you’re texting anonymous strangers who are mandated to text nice things back.

Artist Steals Instagram Photos & Sells Them For $100K At NYC Gallery…yes, right now you can purchase someone’s Instagram photo for around $100,000. The money won’t go to the photographer, however, it will go to “artist” Richard Prince, who has blown up and made prints of other people’s Instagram photos for his series titled “New Portraits.”

Click to Enlarge

AD OF THE WEEK/MONTH/WHATEVER

Imagine, in a season of racial division, imperialist deception, and capitalist malaise, the whole world gathered upon a hill sharing a fizzy brown drink. Well, they did (metaphorically) and “Hilltop” became one of the top commercials of all time. In honor of the real genius behind the ad, namely Bill Backer, the creative director at the real McCann-Erickson, here is this week’s #TBT pick:

Read more about how this commercial changed the world of advertising…and the world:

What Coke Taught the World: The “It’s the Real Thing” ads were among the first to recognize the market potential of a multicultural America.

The post Don Draper…I Owe You. appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

(*) SIDE NOTE: By the way, I would have guessed this
would happen. I remember my first trip to Syria in 2009. There I was at a Syrian
Tourism Department a press conference. [Yes Syria had a tourism department long
ago. I was one of their public relations stars and was able to get their
USA-imposed travel warning lifted eighteen months prior to the start of their
civil war. (Yeah, yeah, I know!…they should have listened a little bit more.)
Anyway, at this presser, my friend and colleague, Ally Miola (editor of Business
Traveler magazine) implored the Syrian Minister of Tourism, Dr. Saadallah Agha
Alqalah, to lift their Facebook ban because Syria was “better than that.” Of
course that immediately prompted him to end everything right then and there. Months
later Facebook was lifted. I mean, even Syria knew than banning social media
was badness. Bottom line, have media savvy advisers around you and good things
happen. Have ignorant media advisers around you and bad things happen…it’s that
simple.

Guy Fawkes masks used to have a higher Q rating that many PMs.

So I’m guessing now that Erdoğan’s week didn’t go
quite the way he envisioned it. Why? Because before Thursday, most people on
our little blue planet barely knew his name. As a matter fact, I would wager
that those little funny masks every would-be rebel is wearing had a better
Q-rating that Erdoğan. Instead #DictatorErdoğan sent millions of non-Turks
scrambling to Wikipedia to figure out which new bad guy on the block was trying
to force his way into the infamously elite club of Social Media Blockers
started by the collective of Iran, Egypt and North Korea.

• “Twitter, Facebook
  and YouTube have to respect the Turkish Republic’s laws…Turkey is not a
  banana republic.”
• “We won’t allow
  the people to be devoured by YouTube, Facebook or others.”
• “We will not leave this nation at the mercy of
  YouTube and Facebook”
• “I cannot understand how sensible people still defend
  Facebook, YouTube and Twitter…they run all kinds of lies.”
• “If Twitter, Youtube and Facebook will be honest; if
  they’ll stop being so immoral, stop attacking families, we’ll support
  them.”
• “We now have a
  court order… We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international
  community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic.”

Glorious Bodrum, Turkey

UPDATE (5/21/14): Apparently, this ousted PayPal exec didn’t read this column. Ugh…think twice before hitting the send button!

The post Twitter, mwitter! appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.