Video on Instagram: Speculation about Instagram launching their own short form video service to counter Twitter’s Vine finally came true this week. You can now photograph and film your latte using Instagram.

(I swear I wrote that before I watched the video – WHERE SOMEBODY VIDEO INSTAGRAMS THEIR LATTE!)

Anyway, the differences between Instagram video and Vine:

  • you can take up to 15 seconds of video (rather than only 7 seconds on Vine)
  • the filters that made Instagram so popular are also available to videos shot with Instagram
  • when you post a video, you can select a particular still from your clip as the hero image

Vine responded by posting some videos of their own, featuring sneak peaks of new features for  revamped video stream categories and draft Vines (yes please!) – at least, that is what Techcrunch believes they are.

Hazy marketing: Remember when real-time marketing went mainstream? You know, when Oreo tweeted about being able to dunk an Oreo cookie in the dark after the lights went out at the Superbowl? And everybody loved it and wrote blog posts about how brilliant it was and how since then anybody working in comms has thought about how they can get their own Oreo moment?

Well, even the masters at Oreo don’t always get it right. You may have seen coverage on the BBC yesterday about the haze in Singapore from the forest fires in Indonesia (much like the ones 16 years ago when I was still in high school in Singapore – only much, much worse). The marketing bods decided that this message to their Singaporean fans would be a good idea.

Source: Oreo

Now, I can’t see the response to the image (the post is only visible to people in Singapore), but personally, I think this is in bad taste and I wouldn’t be surprised if the locals don’t see the funny side.

Bizarrely Adidas posted a similar effort to their Facebook page: offering 152 free gym passes on a day when the Pollutant Standards Index hit 152 at lunchtime.

Source: Adidas

Now, anything between 100-200 is considered to be unhealthy, so encouraging people to head out in that environment isn’t such a smart thing. In fact, on June 20, the PSI peaked at 371, a level of pollution deemed to be hazardous – but they are still posting similar content (although they’re no longer so keen on matching free gym passes to the PSI levels).

Am I getting too paranoid?

High street food chat: Research from Visceral Business and Synthesio found that 10 UK high street brands account for 96% of all social media food conversations. Those brands: Burger King, KFC, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Subway, Greggs, Nando’s, Ben & Jerry’s and Dominos (HT @DigitalBlonde).

REI Member Stories: Recreational Equipment Inc (REI) make outdoor gear and clothing. Their clientele ranges from skiers, ridiculously inspiring iron-women (like @celia_cole), climbers, trekkers… you get the idea. A great post on PSAMA goes into detail about how REI works closely with their customers to create some stunning user generated content to market their products in intensely engaging clips (HT @jcolman).

Key advice from @Kelly_Ann_Walsh, Digital Equipment Program Manager for REI: “Don’t try to create a new behaviour. Try instead to integrate what your community is already doing.” And some key questions for any company interested in using UGC in their marketing:

  • What is your community doing and how can you leverage it to provide value to your audience?
  • What are your objectives for engagement?
  • How can you leverage current behaviour to create a community or connection?
  • How can you drive continued engagement?
  • Do you have the resources to moderate the content and scale?
  • What are the legal considerations?

Digital publishing ≠ paper publishing: “As we adapt to a world of connected devices, the way we think about our content publishing process and workflow must adapt too.” An excellent piece by @karenmcgrane in the Harvard Business Review.

Good news: “The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on.”

Would you hire these people? A post entitled ‘The Crazy, Creative Staff Photographs Of Ad Agencies’ and I really couldn’t say it any better. Some of these really are very whacky (HT @tomparker81).

Videos of the week: This Russian commercial for Tampax takes an unexpected turn (HT @KristianWard29)

Russell Brand makes a mokery of MSNBC’s Morning Joe (not too hard, but still, pretty good television)

And finally: Textatrosphe

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