1. McKay Allen, “How IHOP Generates Sales: SMS Marketing Case Study,” Bsuiness2Community, March 26, 2013, www.business2community.com/marketing/how-ihop-generates-sales-sms-marketing-case-study-0445725.
2. Ibid.
3. Chantal Tode, “P.F. Chang-owned Pei Wei Adds 5,000 Consumers to email database via Mobile,” Mobile Commerce Daily, November 1, 2011, www.mobilecommercedaily.com/pei-wei-adds-over-6000-names-to-email-subscriber-list-via-mobile.
4. David Kirkpatrick, “Mobile Marketing: How Redbox Drove 1.5 Million Texts and Added 200,000 Mobile Participants in 10 Days,” MarketingSherpa, October 6, 2011, www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/how-redbox-drove-15-million.
5. Allegra Tepper, “The Power of Text Message Marketing,” Mashable, July 13, 2012, http://mashable.com/2012/07/13/text-message-marketing-infographic/.
6. David Meyer, “Chat Apps Have Overtaken SMS by Message Volume, but How Big a Disaster Is That for Carriers?,” GigaOM, April 29, 2013, http://gigaom.com/2013/04/29/chat-apps-have-overtaken-sms-by-message-volume/.
7. Lance Whitney, “Father of SMS Reflects on 20th Anniversary of First Text Message,” CNET, December 3, 2012, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57556747-94/father-of-sms-reflects-on-20th-anniversary-of-first-text-message/.
8. Pamela Clark-Dickson, “OTT Messaging Traffic Will Be Twice the Volume of P2P SMS Traffic by End of 2013,” Informa Telecoms & Media (blog), April 29, 2013, http://blogs.informatandm.com/12861/news-release-ott-messaging-traffic-will-be-twice-the-volume-of-p2p-sms-traffic-by-end-2013/.
Chapter 19
Instagram: Moving Pictures
We are forever on a quest to take a moment and record it forever in time. Instagram is a tool to remember. Our mission is to capture and share the world’s moments.1
—Kevin Systrom
Once a “neat, little photo app with some cool image filters,” Instagram (@Instagram) has grown into something far, far greater. CEO Kevin Systrom (@Kevin) now reports to Mark Zuckerberg as part of Facebook’s growing social and mobile media empire. And as of June 2013, Instagram doesn’t just take pictures; it lets users create 15-second videos—9 seconds more than videos on Twitter’s Vine app (@VineApp).
Yes—in Facebook and Twitter’s battle for photo and video supremacy, mere seconds matter. But whether those seconds matter to consumers will be determined as Instagram and Vine battle it out for king of the mobile-image app hill. As of this writing, Instagram still reigns supreme, having built the mobile world’s most utilized app for image creation and social sharing—and the one that more brands use today.
To assess whether this channel has something to offer your company, you must first download and use the Instagram mobile app. As one of mobile first’s pioneers, Instagram is built around the mobile app experience rather than its website. If you’ve never used Instagram, think of it as Twitter for images. You can post your own images and follow other people so their images appear in your image feed. Within Instagram, you can also:
Take a photo/video and apply artistic filters to it.
Tag people in your photo/video.
Geotag your photo/video.
Add a description.
Add a hashtag.
Share your image/video with your Instagram and other FOLLOWERS.
Share your image/video with your Facebook FANS.
Search and browse other people’s photos/videos.
Like, comment, or share other people’s images and videos.
All these capabilities allow Instagram to feed your Proprietary Audience Development efforts by delivering:
SEEKERS who search and browse photos/videos
AMPLIFIERS who like, comment, and share photos both inside and outside Instagram (thanks to one-click sharing to Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Twitter, and Tumblr)
FOLLOWERS who receive updates of your images in their feeds
The hands-down dominant brand on Instagram as of this writing is Nike. While its FOLLOWER count (1.7 million) is third behind Victoria’s Secret (@VictoriasSecret) and National Geographic (@NatGeo), it has nearly double the mentions (#Nike) over 30 days (13.3 million) of any other brand.2 The keys to Nike’s success include:
Access. Nike uses Instagram to provide FOLLOWERS with a behind-the-scenes glimpse of international sporting events.
Brand. Nike benefits from the habit of AMPLIFIERS to tag their pictures and videos with brand hashtags (like #Nike) to increase their visibility in Instagram search. The same thing happens on Vine videos.
Celebrities. Nike regularly posts photos and videos of its celebrity endorsers to Instagram, and includes celebrity Twitter handles in the captions. This creates Earned Media opportunities as CELEBRITIES and AMPFLIERS share those photos with their FANS and FOLLOWERS.
Diversity. Nike uses Instagram to represent the diversity of products, sports, and CUSTOMERS.