We're looking for the right person to manage a number of projects, wear a lot of hats and help clients grow their businesses. Who's the "right person?" Glad you asked:
Read MoreWe've known for a while that ads would be coming to Instagram. That's how the revenue model of a social network works; get the users first, then sell access to them. The model gives marketers great opportunities to put hyper-targeted ads in front of only the people whom we want to show them to, which is a valuable proposition.
Producing ads for Instagram is exciting to me. Social networks have been gradually improving ads in ways that make them more relevant and less intrusive. I have a feeling that IG ads experience will be well designed and thought out. Unfortunately that still may not protect us (advertisers) from ruining it.
It doesn't have to be a bad experience. @jtiproducts [client] recently posted the photo above. It received over 2,000 likes and 50 comments after it was picked up and re-shared by three other accounts. I think it could just as easily be a sponsored photo, and I think it would receive a similar positive reaction. Because it's about more than just the product; it's about the lifestyle of those who might be future buyers.
Social media feeds are great places for ad placements, but we must respect the people who we advertise to and the context we're advertising in. On Instagram we must advertise relevant things that stand on their own as art, as interesting, as impressive. And we mustn't make our product or our logo the hero. Nobody wants to be sold to while they playing with their friends.
And so I make a plea to advertisers. Don't screw this up for everybody.
So many articles, posts and talks nowadays drone on about how to optimize for conversions, generate leads, and "growth hack" (for lack of a worse term). Marketers and designers love to talk about how they caused an engagement graph to move up and to the right. What we rarely hear about are the fundamental privacy and/or trust rules they ignored -- or worse, broke -- along the way.
This talk from Mike Montiero ( <- Links to his twitter profile which is arguably NSFW) delivers a swift smack-upside-the-head to every one of us who have sacrificed what we think is right for what we're told to do or what we think we need to do to impress those we report to.
As builders, marketers and designers, we have the power to please, empower, irritate and destroy those who trust us with their information. Let's do more of the former and less of the latter.
You are directly responsible for what you put into the world. Yet every day designers all over the world work on projects without giving any thought or consideration to the impact that work has on the world around them. This needs to change.
Jason Fried, Founder of 37 Signals, talks about why teaching is such an important aspect of marketing. Must watch for anybody who's trying to market and sell a product or service (or sell anything, for that matter).
The Talk: Marketing by Sharing Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals, a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based tools possible with the least number of features necessary. 37signals' products include Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire, Ta-da List, and Writeboard. 37signals also developed and open-sourced the Ruby on Rails programming framework.
