Qantas tries to appeal to millennial fliers with branded-content site

Australian airline Qantas, like many brands, wants to reach younger people, so it’s turning to content.

AWOL, a brand-content site created last year with brand-content shop Junkee Media, features original articles and, yes, advertising from local tourism boards, rental car agency Avis and camera maker Olympus. It features articles like “Is this the best way to enjoy a natural hot spring?” and “How to travel with your partner and still like them afterwards.”

Stories are data-driven, said Neil Ackland, CEO of Junkee Media. Coachella, for example, is popular with Australian millennials and drives traffic on flights to Los Angeles, so the four-person editorial team will often write pieces about the festival at that time. The site averages 250,000 uniques a month and 2 million visits since it launched a year ago, according to Qantas.

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The Top Ten Emoji Campaigns of 2015

Emojis emerged as a campaign trend in 2014 and, while some argue the use of smiley faces and pizza slices to express complex ideas has already jumped the shark, it became a relevant part of the current marketing lexicon in 2015. Thus, the trend warrants an end-of-the-year list featuring some of the best known and most innovative approaches to emoji marketing.

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Durex Created a Racy Online Art Museum to Get the Chinese Talking About Sex

Concerned that not enough people in China feel comfortable discussing sexuality, condom brand Durex worked with social marketing agency S-Lab to create an online sex museumthat broaches the topic in the trippiest way possible. 

(Didn't Durex already make emoji to deal with this problem?)

The museum, accessible through a QR code, is a fully explorable virtual space where full-color artwork, provided by 12 artists solicited for the project, hangs on black-and-white walls. Clicking on individual pieces of art provides a closer look and info about them.

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With Vinyl's Resurgence, Here's How Brands Are Capitalizing on Music's Most Analog Medium

The resurgence of vinyl has everybody talking, and listening.

Maybe you've thumbed through a trend piece in The New York Times, crediting analog-loving millennials as the impetus for the revival. Or, you've read in Billboard or on Pitchfork aboutthe trouble that comes with manufacturing vinyl. Perhaps you passed through a Barnes & Noble store over the holidays to find LPs of current releases from Adele and Taylor Swift dominating displays in the music section. Or, could it be that you're an audiophile who has more than 1,000 records stored meticulously in your apartment—and can't resist rolling your eyes when yet another magazine piece proclaims that the ancient vinyl record has been resurrected in a digital age and might just resurrect the recording industry along with it.

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A New Survey Looks at the Growing Demand for Diversity in How Ads Portray Families

ll know by now that the American family looks a lot different than it used to. Whether defined by LGBT parents, nonmarried parents or stay-at-home dads, two out of five households today do not fit the traditional mold, notes a new report, "Family Diversity Is the Norm," from YouGov and Johnson & Johnson-owned parenting site BabyCenter.

But exactly what does that mean for brand marketers? Just as the makeup of families has changed, so have the ads targeted to them.

"For brands, the good news is that there's lower risk when stepping into this territory," said Ted Marzilli, CEO of YouGov BrandIndex, noting that 80 percent of parents say they like seeing diverse families in ads. (The report also found that 60 percent of parents say a brand that respects all kinds of families is an important factor in their purchasing decisions.) But, it's not just enough to show diverse families in ads. "You have to be authentic," Marzilli pointed out.

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Virtual reality: The last frontier in native advertising

Virtual reality is gaining so much momentum that it will soon become an avalanche of immersive experience. After Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus, a leader in the VR hardware space, huge names like Google, Apple, and Sony have joined VR’s deluge, with their own sizable investments in proprietary VR technology and products.

TV, the Internet, and mobile have all radically changed how brands connect and engage with consumers. VR is the next major platform to shatter advertising norms, dramatically changing how brands and advertisers connect and empathize with consumers. Some consider VR to the be the “final frontier” of mediums because any subsequent medium can be invented within VR.

Companies such as Coca-Cola, HBO, and Nissan have ventured into the uncharted territory of virtual worlds with one-off experiences like Coke World Cup experience. While these individual experiences are novel and exciting, this type of advertising isn’t exactly scalable due to the amount of time and resources necessary to create it.

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Snickers Is Now Selling Absurd Hunger-Themed Products on eBay

Has hunger ever caused you to feel like a princess who's also a little spacey—aka, a "Sprincess"? You need an Astro Tiara ... or maybe just a Snickers Crisper. 

You can buy the former on eBay, anyway, along with several other ridiculous products that Snickers and BBDO have dreamed up for people suffering from the kind of linguistic-mashup hunger symptoms introduced in the Snickers Crisper campaign. 

This new "Hunger Innovations" campaign isn't limited to eBay, either. Snickers is also imitating your favorite home shopping channel with a faux infomercial, and taking advantage of autoplaying video in your Facebook news feed, to promote the conveniently bite-sized two-per-pack Crisper bars. 

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New York Magazine Building Out Branded Content Studio

New York magazine, fresh off its stellar performance at the National Magazine Awards for editorial excellence, is in the process of building out an in-house branded content studio.

The department, which will include about 11 staffers once additional hires are made and some staffers move from other departments, is being led by Justin Montanino, who began at New York on Feb. 22. Mr. Montanino came from Fusion, where he served as director of development for branded content.

New York is already active in the branded content space; 33% of the company's digital ad revenue in 2015 came from native ads and custom executions. But publisher Larry Burstein said that New York will become more proactive, pitching branded content campaigns rather than simply including branded elements when requested in RFPs.

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Inspiration!

Here's another site with very clean UX and great design content too. Check it out here.

The mystery over the @ sign

The @ character is the symbol of the internet age, crucial for emails and social networking. But no-one really knows where it came from, writes Claire Bates.

The "at sign" was once an obscure symbol known only to book-keepers. That changed thanks to Ray Tomlinson, the man widely regarded as the inventor of the email.

He plucked it from his keyboard in 1971 to go between the user name and destination address when sending a message between two computers in his office. Tomlinson chose @ because it was then rarely used in computing, so wouldn't confuse early programs or operating systems. In a happy coincidence, the English name of the symbol was already "at".

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Google Opens Project Fi Mobile Network To Everyone In The U.S.

Google has announced that it is opening its Project Fi mobile network to everyone in the U.S. Project Fi is the Internet giant’s virtual mobile network that uses open Wi-Fi hotspots and cellular networks belonging to Sprint and T-Mobile to provide voice, text, and data services to users. The service allows users to make phone calls and texts even while only on a Wi-Fi connection. Previously, Project Fi had been an invite-only service.

Besides the ability to make calls and texts over Wi-Fi networks, another headline feature of Project Fi compared to other mobile networks is its pricing structure. Users pay $20 a month up front for unlimited domestic talk and text and unlimited international texts as well as an additional $10 a month for every GB of data they want to use. However, at the end of the month, any unused data gets credited back to their account.

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Facebook wants to detect slang before it's popular

It's tricky to catch slang while it's still cutting edge. Unless you're in the right social circles, you'll probably hear that lingo when it hits the mainstream... in other words, when it's already passé. Facebook might have a way to catch those words while they're still hip, though. It receiveda patent for social glossary technology that would detect slang, acronyms and other neologisms. The conceptual software would look for terms that don't have a known meaning (including familiar words out of context) and add them to the glossary if appropriate. It'd even pull terms out of the glossary if they fall out of favor -- say, describing something as "totally tubular" when you're not an '80s-era surfer.

The code would make a note of the social groups using that slang based on everything from location to common traits like age. While it could automatically add terms on its own, Facebook raises the possibility of polling users to decide whether or not their turns of phrase should get official recognition.

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Contently's Podcasts on SoundCloud

Contently's podcasts are really interesting: all conversations about storytelling, content strategy and digital media. Check them out here.

How Snapchat Built a Business

On a Wednesday in early February, Khaled Khaled, a 40-year-old record producer from Miami, stepped into the garden of his temporary residence at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles. As he does most mornings, he gave thanks for another day on earth. “Good morning,” he said to no one in particular. “Bless up.”

DJ Khaled, as he’s more commonly known, was once a minor figure in the music world, a creator of radio-friendly hip-hop hits and the host of a nightly show on one of Miami’s top FM stations. The rap on Khaled was that he could attract talented collaborators but wasn’t much of a musician himself. “Mostly, he just incessantly screams dumb catchphrases,” one Pitchfork reviewer complained. “And he doesn’t even do that particularly well.” This sort of thing weighed on Khaled. The critics, the haters, the people who’ve ignored his career—they didn’t want him to be in such a beautiful garden.

“I love my angels,” Khaled said, admiring the red, white, and purple cyclamens at the hotel. He saw God in those perennials. He also saw a metaphor for his own life’s journey. Khaled sees metaphors everywhere, actually, which is a major key—or as he prefers to type it out, “major ”—to his success on Snapchat, the social network where he has amassed some 6 million followers since last October. “Life is like flowers,” he observed, training his iPhone camera at the ground and holding down the record button. “You grow. You blossom. You become great.” He posted the 10-second video to Snapchat, then repaired to his bungalow to further philosophize on the power of positive thinking, hard work, and the divine. That went out to his Snapchat followers too, in a continuous series of clips.

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How Personas & User Journeys Drive Web Experience

Download this white paper from UpTrending to understand a web marketer's guide to personas and user journeys.

Chrome Music Lab

Music is for everyone. So this year for Music In Our Schools month, we wanted to make learning music a bit more accessible to everyone by using technology that’s open to everyone: the web. Chrome Music Lab is a collection of experiments that let anyone, at any age, explore how music works. They're collaborations between musicians and coders, all built with the freely available Web Audio API. These experiments are just a start. Check out each experiment to find open-source code you can use to build your own.

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Inspiration!

Check out the great UX and interactive elements here!

5 Essentials for a Successful Native Advertising Marketing Campaign

The native advertising sector is growing fast. Businesses know that banner ads are now largely ineffective, so they are increasingly turning to native ads to get in front of their prospects.

Platforms like Facebook and Buzzfeed have slowly been training their users to accept native ads. Ads are seamlessly integrated within organic content, and provide an interesting, value-added content experience; a far cry from a traditional promotional advertisement.

If you're investing in great content for your content marketing campaign, getting it in front of the right audience is an important part of your strategy. Native advertising, when done right, can be an extremely effective method to do this. Following are five essentials to ensure you have a successful native advertising campaign.

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The Future of Content Marketing is Mobile

At the beginning of each year, business thought leaders from every industry announce their predictions for new trends and innovations. In previous years, popular predictions have been the internet of things, omni-channel and personalization, among others.

With regards to content marketing, delivering relevant content to your audience, wherever they are, has typically been the mantra for most of these predictions, and traditionally,”wherever they are” has referred to social channels or advertising on publisher sites. While this is certainly a good start, these approaches don’t take into consideration how these audiences engage with these channels. What time of day do they visit? Why do they visit them? And finally, what device do they use to visit them?

According to eMarketer, 51% of the total time an adult spends engaged with digital media is on a mobile device, and according to Internet Retailer, mobile commerce is now 30% of all US e-commerce.

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The Good and Evil of Native Advertising

Native advertising is hardly new. Since the early 1900s it’s been around in the form of advertorials, sponsored radio shows, and even infomercials. In the 2010s, native advertising as we know it took off, with sites like Buzzfeed pioneering the way with sponsored content. To some, it’s seen as an unobtrusive solution to advertising. To others, it feels deceitful.

By definition, native advertising is advertising that takes on the form and function of the platform it appears on. Native advertising in the form of radio shows up as announcers talking favorably about a product sponsoring the show. Infommercials are just commericials for products turned into something that resembles a television show. Today, it most often means social media posts that show up on your feed or an article about a product or company showing up in your news source. 

The question remains. As marketers, how can we use native advertising in our strategy while staying current with trends without making the people we’re trying to sell to hate us?

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