Brands
Content Catchup: Cracking the Brand Lift Code, Emoji Apocalypse, and More Must-Reads
Here’s what you missed while following the lead of everyone at BuzzFeed and BroBible and procrastinating by taking our “What Media Company Are You?” quiz…
Why Every Content Creator Needs a Taylor Swift
T-Swift faced a lot of backlash this week for her Twitter beef with Nicki Minaj, but I decided to ignore all that and focus on her symbolic power:
On a service level, I feel pretty much exactly the same about Spotify and Apple Music. But Apple Music has Taylor, and she’s pretty much the only thing that got me through a very hungover roundtrip drive from New York to Maryland for a wedding two weekends ago. So, in my mind, Apple Music wins. And that got me thinking about what makes us value media most:
We can talk all day about advanced metrics, but there’s a pretty simple way to know if someone truly values your content: They pay for it.
Study: Brand Content Drives Massive Brand Lift
Recently, we surveyed our readers about how they felt about us, and, honestly, the results were shocking. Click through for the full methodology and findings, but here are some key findings to whet your whistle:
— Higher engagement with content led to a lift across every nearly every KPI we sought to measure, including: brand awareness, brand opinion, brand associations, brand trust, likelihood to purchase, and net promoter score.
— Engaged subscribers had a net promoter score nearly 3x that of unengaged subscribers.
— 65 percent of engaged subscribers said that they trusted us the most to provide valuable information on content marketing, besting the Content Marketing Institute (23 percent) and The New York Times (9 percent).
It’s pretty fascinating stuff, and we conducted the study without breaking the bank. Read it.
Are Brands Taking Emojis Too Far?
Like your mom, brands just discovered emojis, and the results can be a little disconcerting. Tessa Wegert examines the state of brand emojification:
In the case of Chevrolet, the emojis were clearly an attempt to speak what it perceived as the language of America’s youth. Even though there was an accompanying YouTube series in which comedian Norm Macdonald goes to Emoji Academy to help decode the release, many people seemed to be confused by the announcement. As Wired‘s Megan Logan put it: “While it’s an admittedly clever gimmick, it seems that perhaps we are not ready for the all-emoji press release.”
The campaign got us wondering: Are brands taking emojis too far?
7 Brands With Print Magazines That Are Actually Awesome
Here’s a strange truth of brand content: The most badass and ballsy iterations come in an old-school medium—print. Dillon Baker looks at seven that genuinely rock. Read it.
This Airbnb Parody Will Make You Laugh—and Then Feel Really Creeped Out
And finally, we get to your bit of pre-weekend fun: This super funny and creepy parody of Airbnb’s #mankind campaign. Click through for the background and commentary. Otherwise, enjoy:
Image by Joel ShawnGet better at your job right now.
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