By Mark Eting
Bullseye Strategy Special Correspondent
What do you call brand-created content that includes little or no mention of its brand sponsor? Not a single logo, product plug or other subtle or not-so-subtle integration? Branded content? Non-branded content? Or, simply, content? It’s a riddle, and it’s at the center of this week’s digital marketing news roundup. In other quiz-related news, quite literally, Instagram quiz stickers are the answer to our prayers; meanwhile, Shopify’s upped its platform to check even more of e-commerce marketers’ boxes.
Adobe Made an 11-Minute Video That Isn’t About Adobe
There are certain rules when it comes to branded video content: (1) Gracefully integrate the brand’s product or services and (2) keep it short and sweet. Adobe barreled through this conventional wisdom with a new mini-movie-length video, a parody of influencer marketing written and directed by Zach Braff of Scrubs, that includes mentions of hair tonic, courier owls and lip gloss made from rhino excretions…but not Adobe Creative Cloud, the product sponsoring the video. With 1 million organic social media views and 150k social engagements among the target demo of college students, might this non-branded-branded-content approach be worth emulating?
Instagram Quiz Stickers Are Here!
Pop quiz: How does our agency feel about the new Instagram quiz stickers? Are we (a) excited, (b) eager to try them out for our clients, (c) sad that we can’t just quit our jobs and take quizzes all day or (d) all of the above? The feature is available in Stories and, like its predecessor, polls, is created with engagement in mind. Be sure to follow Bullseye Strategy on Instagram so you can answer some important questions we’ll be throwing your way!
New Snapchat and Facebook Ecommerce Ad Options
E-commerce advertisers are likely feeling (a) elated and (b) excited about Shopify’s latest enhancement, which enables users to purchase Snapchat Story Ads and Facebook Dynamic Ads natively within the Shopify platform. This self-service tool is an expansion upon the Facebook and Google shopping campaign integrations launched last year and is intended to simplify advertising on Shopify.
“Mark Eting” is the pen name of the Bullseye Strategy team. Check back with us next week for more news on what’s buzzing in the digital marketing industry.