Coca-Cola ‘Choose to Smile”

Coca-Cola asks the question “did we forget the first thing we learnt?” Before we started crawling, walking or talking, there is one thing that we learnt to do before all those things. Yep that’s right, put car keys in our mouths and projectile vomit across an entire room. Oh and smile apparently.

This very simple video has achieved almost 7m views in just three weeks of life. I think I managed just four in my first month of existence. As you can imagine I was a horrible baby.

Starbucks and Spotify take over your ears

As detailed last week, Starbucks and Spotify have announced a partnership that will see the music streaming service integrated into Starbucks’ 7,000 stores and its 10m member loyalty program My Starbucks Rewards.

In an effort to redefine the in-store experience, Starbucks is going to allow its employees to influence the playlists that determine what music is played in its locations. In other words, baristas will now also play the role of DJ.

According to Starbucks, this first phase of its Spotify relationship is just the beginning of an effort to create a “first-of-its-kind music ecosystem.”

You better pray this guy isn’t into Ozric Tentacles otherwise you may need to find another coffee shop.

Royal baby newsjacking round-up

This is by no means an endorsement of this kind of behaviour, I just thought I’d round-up a few of the more high-profile branded efforts in welcoming the new Princess of Cambridge. 

The most successful brand on Twitter was Disney, with its montage of Disney princess births being tweeted more than 3,600 times according to Amobee. 

You can decide for yourselves whether Dominos or Coca-Cola has any business getting involved.

Domino’s make pizza delivery history

As detailed by Patricio Robles earlier in the month, hungry Twitter users in the United States will be able to tweet their orders to Domino’s by tweeting nothing but an emoji. 

Patrick Doyle, the CEO of Domino’s, states that it has got the process of ordering pizza down to a five second exchange. 

Domino’s has become something closer to a tech company that sells pizza, it has amassed a team of about 250 technology employees at its Ann Arbor, MI headquarters vs. about 50 tech employees just a decade ago.

According to USA Today’s Bruce Horovitz, Domino’s Twitter ordering system will make it the “first major player in the restaurant industry to use Twitter, on an ongoing basis, to place and complete an order.”

I can’t decide if this is the best or worse thing to happen to the world. Probably the former.

The Perfect Hashtag

Twitter has issued some advice on how to create the optimal hashtag, with particular relevance to reality TV programmes. 

The team sifted through more than 350 hashtags across eight primetime reality shows in the US from January to July 2014 and a few different types of hashtags were consistently picked up by viewers at a higher rate than average when shown on screen 

This indicates that certain formats have stronger potential however the common denominator is that they can all be easily connected back to the reality show.

Here is Twitter’s advice:

  • Include show name: This simple best practice cannot be overlooked, Twitter has seen Tweets per minute increase substantially when the show name is included.
  • Use a cast or guest name with “Team”: Employing #teamXYZ hashtags (where XYZ is a cast/guest/participant) drives Tweets per minute, while hashtags including names without “team” actually generate less buzz than average.
  • Describe a moment in 15-17 characters: a pithy hashtag that still contains enough information to convey a moment can increase the momentum around a conversation, sometimes too-short acronyms are harder to adopt.

And you thought the perfect hashtag was #EmojiOrdering

The Net Set

Net-A-Porter launched its own social shopping network this month. The Net Set promises to be a ‘complete social network’ connecting you with your friends, brands, designers and style icons. 

Features include being able to shop any item directly from the app, and if you upload your own style or outfit of the day, image recognition will find similar styles for you to shop. 

We reviewed the app here and discussed how it could certainly steal a few fashionistas away from Instagram.

Facebook now supports Gifs

That’s right. Facebook now supports Gifs. 

The world has become a better place.

(Small print via Christina Warren of Mashable: GIFs will only be animated if they are posted via links, and not uploaded. GIF links from Tumblr do not display properly in preview mode, but work fine after posting.)

Pinterest continues to drive the highest spending traffic 

According to new research by Shopify, the average amount spent per Pinterest referred order is $50, the highest of all major social networks. Other stats reveal that 93% use Pinterest to plan purchases and 96% use Pinterest to gather product information. 

Click the infographic for a larger version.

Have a YouTube break, have a KitKat

For a limited run of 600,000 bars, KitKats have been rebranded with ‘YouTube Break’ to remind you to stop watching endless Nicki Minaj videos at your desk and instead eat a sugary snack.

This is just one in a series of 72 differently branded bars for the campaign, but the ‘YouTube Break’ comes with added interactivity. If you say “YouTube my break” into Google Voice Search you will be served a KitKat advert as well as the top four current trending videos. 

Hang on a minute. I can eat KitKats and watch YouTube videos at the same time. I am doing excellent work today.

And finally my favourite social news story this month… 

Cannes film festival banned selfies

Those joyless festival directors from Cannes have banned the act of taking selfies on the red carpet. Theirry Fremaux stated “we are waging a campaign to slow down the contemporary practice of selfless on the red carpet and the steps. Beyond what we think, it’s a practice that’s often extremely ridiculous and grotesque.” 

Fremaux further hammered the point home: “You never look as ugly as you do in a selfie.”

I have no idea what you mean.