Tag: Burger King

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of OMD FWD. This week brands and tech companies have been challenging our social conscience, with Burger King releasing a powerful PSA tackling bullying and Will Ferrell starring in a campaign to show how much mobile phones are interrupting family time (probably because 81% of kids are busy Snapchatting at parties!). Facebook also announced it has purchased an app, TBH, which encourages teenagers to compliment each other.

HEADLINES

• The IAB created the digital ad ‘gold standard’ aimed to improve the quality of digital advertising, with major players such as Google, The Guardian and News UK pledging their commitment in an open letter
• Friends can now track your whereabouts in real time on WhatsApp
• Plenty of updates from Facebook, including their recent purchase of the app TBH which encourages teenagers to compliment each other, the launch of Explore Feed on desktop to help improve organic reach, self-destructing status updates and In-App Purchases for Instant Games
• Snapchat and NBC Universal are partnering together to deliver original content as they go up against the likes of Amazon and Netflix  

INSIGHTS

• For those of you who like stats, Activate’s Michael Wolf presents a wealth of insights for tech and media
• The IAB reports that online video overtakes spends in banner advertising for the first time
• Thought Snapchat usage would be the same at a football game as a party? Think again, as the most popular places are revealed

COOL

• Burger King’s social experiment highlights the problem of teen bullying
• Funny man Will Ferrell shows just how much mobile phones are interrupting family time
• Spotify announces their new program Rise to promote new artists

DEEP READS

• Shopping on Instagram is really taking off as these examples show
• Facebook are testing ‘Sets’ to rival Pinterest
• Try out the best games and apps across Google’s Daydream

Please share anything of interest using #OMDFWD

In October, Twitter announced it was shutting down Vine, its app that lets users create and share 6-second looping videos. However, the company has now announced it won’t actually pull the Vine app from the app store but instead transition it to a new, low maintenance app called Vine Camera. The videos recorded using the new app can be saved to your camera roll or posted directly to Twitter, following a similar strategy to Facebook-owned Instagram. Whilst it is fairly common for under-performing products to simply get closed down entirely Twitter have kept Vine partially online. It will be interesting to see if Vine Camera takes off in the New Year. But before we say goodbye to 2016, Google take us through a trends overview for 2016, from Pokémon to Donald Trump, and TrendWatching tell us what trends to look out for in 2017.

HEADLINES

• Facebook are to trial users blocking certain ad content types from their newsfeed
• Ikea have renamed their products based on Google ‘problem’ searches (handily, the products also solve them)
• AirBnb are looking to expand into offering flights on their platform

INSIGHTS

• How Pokémon is more popular than Trump – Google showcase their trends overview for 2016
• There is future in sharing. Twitter test new designs to ‘share’ on the platform, moving away from the current retweet option
• Is Vine back from the brink? The app is to relaunch as ‘Vine Camera’ in January, without community support

COOL

• One big positive in 2016 – here is a novel way for technology to deliver a pint quicker than the average bar
• Unwanted Christmas gift? Burger King will trade it for a Whopper
• It won’t be lonely this Christmas (but it may be unsettling), with a very friendly AI from Gatebox

DEEP READS

• How tweeting when you are ill is helping to map out the spread of germs
• Introducing Waymo – how a self-driving Google project is now its own Alphabet entity
• Trendwatching have identified their top trends for 2017

… AND THE OMD FWD TOP 3 FOR 2016

• The Deloitte Mobile Report – There’s no place like Phone
• How Facebook announced its live video format would sit at the top of the Newsfeed
• KitKat, who have lost their EU trademark on the four-finger shape just before Christmas, gave students a break from revision by launching fetching holograms of a popular boy band

See you in 2017! Please share anything you spot interesting over the seasonal period with #OMDFWD

With deals from the NFL and MLB already on the books, Snapchat has locked up another sports partnership: A deal with NBC to show Olympics highlights from the 2016 Games in Rio inside the app’s Discover section. Snapchat will be given exclusive behind-the-scenes footage at the games and in return with give NBC access to its super-young user base. But with the NBC partnership not being exclusive they can partner with other social platforms, and that’s exactly what they’re trying to do. With conversations already in place with Facebook and Twitter what does this mean for Snapchat and their levels of exclusivity? 

HEADLINES

• Instagram has added video carousel ads and is currently testing business profiles
• In a move to direct monetisation, Snapchat have been testing their first shoppable ads
• Snapchat, Buzzfeed and NBC ink huge deal to deliver the Olympics highlights, next move to Facebook and Twitter in their conquest for a piece of the sporting pie 
• Facebook is testing a disappearing version for Messenger is testing a ‘discover’ function for Groups, allowing users to find like-minded people

INSIGHTS

• An insight into four publishers WhatsApp strategy
• Facebook videos get 75% of views in first 4 days and some brands are using the new ‘reactions’ to gauge the success of their campaigns
• Google are looking into why we block ads, in a bid to establish what an ‘acceptable’ ad experience should be 

COOL

• Twitter’s Word by Word typewriter will type Shakespeare’s complete works as they are tweeted at the Globe Theatre in London 
• First look at the Burger King Facebook ‘burger bot’ that allows you to order through Facebook
• Puma creates a robot to help runners train while a new smartphone app gives you a hard incentive to get fit

DEEP READS

• Podcasts are on the up but where next for the medium?   
• Forget software or hardware as a service – consider ‘everything as a service’  
• Inside the camps where YouTube makes its next generation of stars as well as the other side of working with influencers