Think twice before launching your Instagram campaign

hirozzzz takes some of the most amazing photos of Tokyo and posts them to Instagram. I follow him.

One day, hirozzzz starts posting photos from Janipur, India instead of Tokyo, all tagged #louisxiiireveal. It turns out, Remy Martin was running a part of their marketing campaign on Instagram, inviting two of the most popular instagrammers to document the press event for a liquor launch. See screenshots below:

My interest was immediately piqued. Did this mean that Instagram was finally moving towards monetization, perhaps by letting brands rent hashtags that they would have full control over? Wow, these Facebook guys are fast!

Only one way to find out, right?

In a spark of excitement, I quickly scan my phone for a randomly trollish to test my hypothesis. This is the result:

Within 24 hours, samhorine (the other instagrammer invited by Remy Martin) comments:

Would be great if you could delete the comment w/ the hashtag as this is a collection of photos taken on a specific trip and you know this isn’t one of them…thanks

Basically, someone quickly saw what I was doing and reported the two participating instagrammers @hirozzzz and @samhorine, one of whom in turn asked me to remove it. In other words, I messed up someone’s marketing campaign in a few seconds, with them not having any way of fixing it but asking me nicely and waiting for my response. Luckily for them, I was just testing something out, and had no intention of any sabotage, and quickly removed the photo.

Popular instagrammers’ photos can command thousands upon thousands of likes. With this in mind, a campaign hashtag containing 100+ photos will get quite a few clicks. Marketing on Instagram can seem lucrative, but you’ll have to plan it more thoroughly. With all the “get free followers” spam and trash accounts on Instagram going around, one can’t simply assume that everyone is going to play nice.

Instagram/Facebook: There are massive untapped revenue sources on Instagram, some of which can be implemented without sacrificing user experience. In fact, I would argue some implementations may even boost user experience. For instance, I would pay for renting a hashtag for a campaign. Think about it.

Outliers - Book Summary

Outliers is a book about success written by Malcolm Gladwell in 2008.

According to Gladwell, the three components of success are:

1. Opportunity

• Innate - How we measure things gives people different opportunities. For instance In elite sports, it’s almost exclusively people born in the first half of year competing. Since young, they’ve have been older and more physically developed than their peers, giving them more opportunities. That this robs society of at least 50% of its elite sports talents. The start of the school year be split into three different timespans, depending on birthday, to give everyone equal opportunity.
• By birth - Rich parents care more about their kids’ education (more likely to do vacation schooling, etc). Poor parents fear authority, which they pass on to their kids.

2. Persistence

You need 10,000 hours of experience to become greatly skilled at something. Although Mozart started composing at an early age, his father undoubtedly helped him a lot when he was younger. It wasn’t until Mozart was older that his best works were composed. Beatles got their 10,000 hours of practice when playing a lot at German clubs in their early days.

3. Intelligence

Extensive studies show that IQ has no correlation with success once above a certain threshold. When a person is smarter than the average, other factors (like persistence) become much better predictors of success.

The book then explains several different types of success. Here are two:

Being Jewish

Jewish people traditionally had no land, and were skilled workers within the garment trade in Europe, and later the States. They had knowledge, skill and persistence. When their descendants in America entered legal professions, they could only find jobs no one wanted to touch. However, due to changing times and business climate, what’s unpopular became become popular. Since they already had experience in that field, they benefited.

Rice Paddies and Hard Work

Asian kids have better grades because of their culture and language. 

Culture: Rice farming much more difficult and land efficient than wheat or gathering economies. There was no physical space or money for automation, so one had to tweak, experiment, work harder and be smarter to increase output. Culture of hard work ingrained in Asian culture from rice farming days.

Maths: Numbers in Asian languages have fewer syllables and are structured more logically than other languages. Fewer syllables also help one remember more things. This gives Asian children a slight edge which transforms into a bigger and bigger edge.

Notes

I’ll begin doing summaries of books that I’ve read from now on, since it will help me remember them better. Hopefully, someone else would find it useful.

Outliers was a fun read with interesting examples. There wasn’t a lot of groundbreaking information, nor was it very challenging. I’m sure there are better books around.

The Sparrow Problem

The age of selling software to users at a fixed, one-time price is coming to an end. It’s just not sustainable at the absurdly low prices users have come to expect. Sure, independent developers may scrap it out one app at a time, and some may even do quite well and be the exception to the rule, but I don’t think Sparrow would have sold-out if the team — and their investors — believed they could build a substantially profitable company on their own. The gold rush is well and truly over.

Looks like this wave of disruption has peaked.

Bye Bob

Apple Announces Retirement of Bob Mansfield, Senior VP of Hardware Engineering

Apple Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Bob Mansfield is retiring, according to an Apple press release. He joined Apple in 1999. He has led Mac hardware engineering since 2005, along with iPhone, iPod, and iPad engineering since 2010. 

In recent years, Apple has been using senior level executives both on stage and in promotional videos to market Apple products.

With the recent news of Bob Mansfield leaving, I wonder if Apple will reconsider this approach. Sure, using real employees makes the marketing seem more genuine and grassroots, but constantly changing spokespeople might not be the most optimal.

It will be interesting to follow how they approach this.