What Instagram’s Carousel Posts for All Users Mean for Marketers

Posted on by ronschott

TL;DR: All users on Instagram can now upload multiple videos/images to one post, similar to ad carousel units

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Instagram recently rolled out the ability for every user to post multiple images/videos/etc. in one post – similar to their Carousel ad product which has been around for about a year.

While most marketers have already dabbled in this format, being able to do so organically means having a new tool in your content bag.

Highlights

  • Users can upload up to 10 videos/photos to one Instagram post
  • No links (like ads have) attached to the post

Things to Think About

  • Opens up the creative canvas for supporting  paid campaigns with similar organic content
  • Means users will be more familiar with these types of posts, which could have both positive and negative implications for our ads:

o   Ad carousels could lose their “new” factor

o   However, users also will understand how these units work and possibly engage with them more

  • Opening the format up allows for more use and possibility of more creative hacks that marketers can draw inspiration from
  • Giving users the chance to post grouped images/video ultimately cuts down on the number of posts in a user’s feed, possibly lessening their feed browsing time
  • Fewer posts in feed means fewer opportunities for ad insertion without creating an overwhelming sense of promoted content – stay tuned to how Instagram is looking to handle this one.

Comparing President Trump’s Inaugural Address to President Obama’s First Inaugural Address

Posted on by ronschott

Note: This post is provided without political slant or intention. It is meant only as a statistical analysis of the texts, as provided to media outlets, of the first inaugural addresses from Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States and Barack H. Obama, the 44th President of the United States.

Inaugural addresses are the first chance a sitting President has to speak to the people he begins serving after the oath of office is taken. From a dais on the steps of the United States Capitol, President Donald J. Trump delivered a 16-minute speech containing 1,433 words compared to the 19-minute speech given by President Barack Obama in 2009 which contained 2,395 words.

Word Use

Section Note: The following word clouds were created using official transcripts of each speech as provided to the media (Trump source link, Obama source link). Often these transcripts include the word “applause” to note where long periods of applause either occurred or were planned. For the sake of accuracy as to the speeches themselves, I have removed that word from the data set. All other words are presented without edit. Word Clouds were created using free online tool at http://www.wordclouds.com/ because I’m on paternity leave and don’t have access to anything else right now. UPDATE 1/20/17 3:33 PM PST : For the record, I hate word clouds and contemplated literally just adding an Excel table with counts of words, but people love word clouds. Why? We’ll never know.

The following is the word cloud from President Trump’s 2017 inaugural address:

trump-cloud-2

The following is the word cloud from President Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural address:

Obama Cloud.png

The top words should come to no surprise to anyone given the two Presidents’ campaign messages leading into their first terms, with President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and President Obama’s “Yes We Can” messaging mixing with the words you would expect – American, American, nation, country etc.

President Trump’s address contained 470 unique words, while President Obama’s 2009 address contained 807 unique words.

Readability and Relative Grade Level

Section note: These scores were created by analyzing the text provided for each speech using the Microsoft Word Readability tool, which creates a score for the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level indices. For more information about these indices, including how they are calculated, click the link for the readability tool

Using the Microsoft Word Readability tool, which creates a score for the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level indices, the speeches were scored as following:

  • Trump
    • Flesch Reading Ease: 62.4
    • Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8th Grade (8.3)
  • Obama (2009)
    • Flesch Reading Ease: 67.5
    • Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8th Grade (8.1)

Both speeches come  near the bands  generally accepted as “target” zones for mass-circulated documents and speeches, with 60-70 being the target for Flesch Reading Ease and 7.0 to 8.0 being the target for Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.

Bonus Content: Presidential Inaugural Speech Length Over Time

The chart below shows the length of Presidential Inaugural speeches from George Washington to Donald Trump, (source link):

length-of-speeches-historical

I understand this is hard to read – for ease of understanding, I’ve added a live link to the Excel below.

You will notice the chart does not include inaugural addresses from each President of the United States. This is because a number of Presidents did not give inaugural addresses as their rise to the office was due to the line of succession. Those include:

  • John Tyler who succeeded after the death of William Henry Harrison
  • Millard Fillmore who succeeded after the death of Zachary Taylor
  • Andrew Johnson who succeeded after the death of Abraham Lincoln
  • Chester Arthur who succeeded after the death of James Garfield
  • Gerald Ford who succeeded after the resignation of Richard Nixon

Image Note: The image used at the top of the page is from President Obama’s second Inauguration.

On Paternity Leave, Screwing Up, and Turning Off

Posted on by ronschott

Into the Wilderness

My wife is a saint. I’ve said it before, but I mean it. She not only took care of Lucas for the first 12 weeks of his life (plus the 10 months he was literally GROWING INSIDE OF HER), but she did so while still taking care of me (let’s face it – I’m only so useful) and while going through probably one of the toughest times in her life. Camille – you’re amazing.

How amazing? Well, I got the chance to find out when I started my paternity leave…

Babies, for the most part do three things when they’re Luke’s age:

  1. Eat (a lot)
  2. Poop/pee (a good amount… but never when you want them to)
  3. Sleep (a ton, but with a hit or miss regularity)

Parents staying home with their kid:

  1. Eat (whenever they can)
  2. Poop/pee (with the door open to hear if the baby is making any myriad of noises which would cause you to finish your business and run out there)
  3. Sleep (not enough)

Work has always been something that’s been important to Camille and I was looking forward to having time with just me and Luke (12 weeks – thanks MSFT!), but I have to admit, even as I was leaving Redmond, I had a little bit of fear.

“What if he doesn’t like me as much as he likes Camille?”

“What if something happens to him while he’s my responsibility?”

“What if I erase all the good stuff he’s accomplished with Camille?”

With no good options for any other route, I headed off… into the wilderness, with a diaper bag, a monkey toy, and an Uppababy stroller.

Out of Office On, But Brain Not Off

I have only taken maybe a total of 4 weeks of vacation in my entire working life – which includes the time I took off when Luke was born and our honeymoon in 2012. So, when the idea of stepping out of day-to-day operations in my job on the Microsoft Global Advertising team became a reality as I closed my door to my office and scribbled “Ron is not here until 2/3/2017” on the glass, it felt weird as hell.

If you know me, you know I put a lot of who I am into my work – and vice versa. Advertising and marketing aren’t just something I do from 9-5 Monday through Friday, they’re part of me… I have a hard time turning them off.

Let’s just say, I had a hard time turning off “Work Ron” to be “Stay at Home Ron” at the onset – so much so that my boss said to start taking me off emails (though, I occasionally still get thrown on some and like to see what’s going on).

One day (I don’t know when), I turned my work calendar off and I now only go into my work email every Monday morning to look at things and make sure nothing is exploding or that I’m not getting locked out of my email/etc. because of some new security protocol.

These days, I still have meetings – but they’re one on ones with Luke where we talk about things like how good of a boy he is (pretty much a performance review), the colors (in English/Spanish/French – so next time I’m on a global call with our markets I can drop colors) on his new bouncy toy, and I have the occasional Skype/FaceTime meeting… with my parents to show them Luke.

Thank God for Netflix/Hulu/Xfinity OnDemand

Do you know how crappy daytime television is? I mean seriously.

When my leave first started, Luke was sleeping a ton during the day still, which meant I had large tracts of time where I was essentially trapped in the house with nothing (though Camille would enthusiastically yell “LAUNDRY” here I’m sure if given the chance) to do.

I re-watched all of How I Met Your Mother, every piece of content available On-Demand for Vice/Viceland, and all the available episodes for Happy Endings – in addition to numerous documentaries, etc.

Also, I’ve been doing a lot of reading (mostly on the internet) since I’ve been home. I’m really enjoying sites like Fatherly, and Life of Dad  for stuff around parenting, etc. They’re filled with great info, but not in a “HERE IS WHAT YOU SHOULD DO, BECAUSE WE SAY SO” way.

#DadChat

I’ve had the same core group of friends pretty much since graduating from WSU in 2005 – made up of fraternity brothers and other good-natured young men (and women). We use WhatsApp to stay connected on a day-to-day basis because we’re all doing different things, living in different places, or off tripping around the globe – it’s a pretty textbook use case for the service in terms of a group messaging aspect.

#DadChat evolved from that core group (we have other spinoffs around passion points as well – West World for example) as a place where those of us with kids could talk about dad stuff and not bum out the single guys and those without kids in the other chat. It turned into a place where we can all ask questions, free from persecution (though, let’s face it – we’ve known each other for a decade, there is a generous amount of ribbing happening) and share frustrations (like getting shit on).

I think you’d find that, at least in Seattle, participation of dads in groups similar to PEPS, etc. is probably higher than most other areas, it wasn’t really an option that presented itself, but the digital version is working just fine.

Screwing Up

If you stuck with this post for this long, it’s because you saw “Screwing Up” in the title and wanted to find out how big of an idiot I am. Well, have at it:

  • On my first day home with Luke alone I went to change his diaper. I took his dirty one off, put his onesie back on, then took him out to the living room and sat him on my lap. Five minutes later, I was drenched in piss… because I’m an idiot and never put another diaper on him.
  • I tried breast milk. It was not good.
  • About a week ago I was talking on the phone with a landscape architect about some work we’re having done and I wasn’t paying attention as I was holding Luke… who knocked my phone off the chair arm and into a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. It still smells a bit malty.
  • Inevitably, when I’m walking and holding Luke my dog jasper tries to kill us both by running around at my feet. I’ve started to pick him up and put him on the coach before I walk around anywhere with Luke.
  • I’ve gone somewhere and forgot the diaper bag (which I’ve moved to a more Ron-ish Herschel backpack. You can find it here.) in the following ways:
    • At home: at least 5x
    • On top of the car: 2x (thanks neighbors for telling me!)
    • Sitting on the side of the street: 2x

I think the lesson here is: none of us are perfect. Shit, I found a way to fall through the bleachers at Recreation Park when I was a baby… which might explain a few things.

Headed Back

I do have to say, these past 2 months hanging out with Luke have been amazing. I wouldn’t trade them for anything – even though I had major FOMO during our last holiday campaign.

At the end of the day, it’s been incredibly awesome to see the way he changes literally from day to day. The development of kids at this stage is so rapid it’s crazy.

I can’t remember who I was talking to the other day, but they asked if I was just exhausted and if having a baby was the hardest thing ever… I had to say no. It’s not that you don’t have some sleepless nights (you do) and it’s not that it’s the most-different and weird thing you will have done in your life (it is), but when you look at your son/daughter it makes every bit of anything that might be hard or exhausting worth it. You’d do it all over again.

Hey, let’s do it again, Camille 🙂

Image may contain: one or more people

Does this make me a daddy blogger?

 

10 Things I’ve Learned in 10 Days of Being a Dad

Posted on by ronschott


At 1:00 a.m. on August 20, our son came into the world. He didn’t come exactly how we thought. In fact, he didn’t come how the doctors thought he would either. Somewhere between the ultrasound on Monday the 15th and Friday night when we checked my wife into the hospital to be induced our son decided to become part of the three percent of babies who flip from upside down (the right way to be) to right side up (the not right way to be). That meant getting him out (as he was nearly two weeks past his due date) a different way. This is where I started learning things. I’m not saying they’re all right. I’m not saying I know anything anyone else doesn’t, but these are 10 things that jumped out at me since our son arrived: 

  1. There’s nothing to prepare you for seeing your wife on an operating table. I know it was planned and I know it’s something that happens every day, but I was sick to my stomach seeing her there. I would’ve switched places with her if I could, but the only thing they’d take out of my abdomen would have been some Annie’s mac ‘n’ cheese.
  2. Meeting your kid for the first time is insane. Yeah, I knew what the end game here was… I had taken high school sex ed. However, things became incredibly real when I heard him cry and saw this little guy that was hanging out inside my wife’s stomach for 9+ months. He looked weird and was screaming at me… and I lost it. He was perfect. I just kept yelling to my wife, over the sounds of the O.R. over the nurses, and over the blue tarp that basically sectioned her off from everything going on down south.  
  3. Babies eat. A ton. Seriously, I’m not sure where he’s putting all this stuff, but the kid eats constantly. It’s amazing. I’d say he has a hollow leg, but honesty he’s so damn long and skinny I’m not sure if that would help.
  4. Babies poop. A ton. See above, then this makes a ton of sense. Oh, also if they have wieners they pee everywhere, so there’s that.
  5. People are horrible drivers. Seriously, everyone is really bad. Maybe it’s me… maybe I’m more acutely aware of this, especially considering it took me about 30mins. to drive the less-than-a-mile route from the hospital to our house.
  6. You can function pretty well while sleep deprived… to a point. Our kid actually sleeps pretty well at night so far, just waking up (usually we actually have to wake him up) to eat every 3 hours or so. That said, it was definitely an adjustment not getting that 7+ hours of solid sleep in. I went to lay down for “30 mins” the other day and woke up 2 hours later.
  7. Strangers will talk to you about your baby. Oh, and touch your baby. And ask really personal questions about the birthing process. And share their really personal info. Just smile and nod.
  8. Everyone has an opinion on your baby’s name. We’re not Brangelina or anything, but we didn’t tell anyone besides some close friends what our kid’s name would be. This was mostly because everyone’s a critic, but also because we just didn’t want to constantly talk about it. 
  9. Your wife/partner/whatever… They’re a freaking badass superhero. You wouldn’t know it looking at her – all 5’8″ and blonde haired with bright, kind eyes… but my wife is so badass. She’s 10 days removed from getting sliced open and is up doing things around the house (and literally has been since getting out of the hospital early). She just magically knows stuff and can calm our son down in a second, usually after I piss him off by changing him or getting too excited and waking him up. I heeded the advice of a coworker who said “there will be a ton of people focused on the baby – focus on your wife,” but honestly, she had this all in the bag.
  10. Every baby is different. “Oh he’s so small!!!” What? Really? He was just normal sized earlier, maybe I put him in the dryer on high heat. Oh shit. Seriously though, he’s skinny, but the doctors (who are presumably trained on this stuff) say he’s just fine. Sorry we didn’t have a fully-formed toddler at birth. There are about as many books about how to raise a kid as there are kids out there. Nothing is going to 100% work for you, especially when your kid is young. Heck, what works for us now might not tomorrow… that’s life. The best you can do is your best. At the end of the day we all get kids who grow up to resent us and slam their doors, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like I said, I’m 10 days in… many more to go, but writing helps me relax and catalog thoughts that have been running around in my head.

Domino’s Pizza UK Gets Giphy

Posted on by ronschott

.GIFs, regardless of how you say the term, are easily some of the most visible pieces of digital content out there these days. They’re in Twitter, on Facebook, there are companies popping up that create .GIF keyboards. 

Domino’s Pizza UK, capitalizing on the move from Twitter to include a dedicated “add a .GIF” button in its mobile app, launched a series of .GIFs under the umbrella of “#Gifeelings” and let us all know with one tweet:


Once you search for “GIFEELINGS” in the app, you’re provided with a wealth of awesome pizza-centric .GIFs created by the brand.


The move from brands to pour dollars into creative that is pretty singular in use is interesting (such as emoji creation), but makes diving into ever-popular messaging apps, etc. Having their .GIFs on Giphy (and thus available on Twitter and via the .Giphy keyboard), Domino’s is setting themselves up as a brand that’s already ahead of others in these walled gardens.

SXSW: A Clever Targeted Ad

Posted on by ronschott

Being in Austin for SXSW means getting target with a ton of ads… Usually not great ones.

However, this PizzaDrone.info ad caught my eye. What happened after the click was even better… though disappointing for someone who wants to see a marriage of two of his favorite things.

  
And after the click…

  

The Next Creative Battleground: Video Captions?

Posted on by ronschott

With Facebook’s move to auto-displaying captions on videos in the Feed, the creative has a new place to flex their muscles – good old fashioned text.

The latest creative use of subtitles comes from Dos Equis as they bid farewell to “The Most Interesting Man in the World” as he presumably is bound to become “The Most Interesting Man in the Galaxy” or something else… That isn’t the point. The point is Dos Equis is using their captions in Facebook’s caption on default land of the Feed to drive people clicking to expand or unmuting: 

  
    
 
Now, admittedly, this isn’t the most ingenious use of captioning to drive home a point, but it’s a start. 

Hotels.com used their “Captain Obvious” character and their own captions to create a fun experience with sound off a while back, but now that Facebook allows the uploading of .SRT files for on-video captions, that means a similar experience for uses across videos.

Fun story about .SRT files + Facebook – they’re finicky. We just ran a global video campaign with 50+ .SRT language caption files – hard work but the campaign was awesome and a ton of fun.

When will Twitter jump on board the no sound + caption train? Has to be soon, right? 

BuzzFeed Invites Users to Binge On with new Video App

Posted on by ronschott

BuzzFeed’s videos have quickly become some of the company’s best performing content, with viewers coming back for episode after episode of videos from Tasty and the likes.

Capitalizing on this, BuzzFeed launched their own standalone video app at Mobile World Congress – the event that’s quickly becoming as important for product announcements and launches across verticals as CES once was.

The app, which is devoid of ads right now, is perfectly poised for regular ads (think pre-roll) and native content either created by brands or with BuzzFeed’s internal studio.

Users are met with a Trending view when entering the app, showing that BuzzFeed’s technology for picking up trending content is at the heart of everything they do. There’s also a “Shows” view where users can discover and subscribe to shows they’re into. Imagine all the binge watching and then binge eating you can do with Tasty videos now!

I’m pretty stoked on the Corgi in the icon, myself. 

  
   
 

Why We Should All be Rooting for Twitter

Posted on by ronschott

Everyone hates the Patriots. OK, not everyone, but a lot of people. They don t hate them because they’re bad, though, they hate them because they’re the best. It sucks watching Tom Brady somehow find a way (Excelt for losing to Denver tonight!) time and time again. We all want to root for the underdogs… we want to get behind those scrappy teams that don’t have all the flash and glitz. The teams that we grew up on that are fighting.

That’s how I think of Twitter.

 I sent my first Tweet from a classroom computer at the School of Visual Concepts where Clay McDaniel and Andy Boyer taught me more than I’d known before about the world of social marketing. After that class, I told myself I’d be doing that as part of my job… I started working for Clay and Andy 5 months later (and then returned to teach that same class for three years).

  
Facebook is, by all accounts, the leader in today’s Internet – and don’t get me wrong, I like Facebook a hell of a lot more than I like the Patriots – and they earned it. They took down MySpace. They grew even as Google was biting at their heels and making plays. 

Twitter, though, came up at roughly the same time and, for all intents and purposes, had the same chances Facebook had to be the biggest on the block, but they didn’t – for a number of reasons.

But instead of LOLing at Twitter’s continued attempts to keep growing and to make products that bring more value to its user base, we should be cheering them on. Twitter, after all, is still where many go for “breaking” information. It’s where you can learn about a trending topic in an unfiltered feed of people you follow – sans algorithm.

Facebook probably wouldn’t be the Facebook it is today without Twitter. Their pushing and competing between 2010 – 2014 brought us more advancements and features in the mobile world than we’d seen the previous 10 years before that. Competition in the social space is just as important as competition in the world economy — it keeps innovation flowing.
The people I’ve worked with at Twitter are incredibly smart and laser focused on users and the brands that help make Twitter what it is.

Is it weird I miss this guy? #failwhale

A photo posted by Ron Schott (@ronschott) on Jan 23, 2016 at 10:44pm PST

//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js

I made a joke the othe night about missing the #FailWhale — and I was only slightly kidding. The days when you’d get a #FailWhale were exciting because Twitter was growing so quickly and so many people were engaged around a single topic (usually) that the servers literally couldn’t keep up. It was kind of fun. I’m also a fan of the Robot who’s arm fell off.

As an advertiser, Twitter’s ability to target real-time conversations has always been an incredible draw for me. They’ve innovated quickly to bring new formats which aren’t just exciting for brands, but engaging and interesting for users. With the addition of Periscope, Twitter has an opportunity to tap into real-time conversations and situations that can put anyone from anywhere in the middle of the action.

So, I’m excited for what @jack and the team have in store. I’ve always been a fan, but I think more people have an incredible opportunity to see how awesome Twitter really can be.

Let’s root for the underdog.

Disclaimer: This post and the entirety of this blog are my personal opinions. Content included in no way is the opinion of my employer, Microsoft. I was not and will not be compensated for this post. I also like Facebook and Instagram — even YouTube… They just aren’t getting slammed right now. 

Advertisers’ Notes: Facebook Launches Sports Stadium in Bid to Win Live Sports Convo Battle Royale

Posted on by ronschott

  
Twitter gets a lot of credit for being the place for “live” social commentary, whether it’s about moments in time (elections, etc.) or sporting events. However, Facebook has been really keen the past few years to tell advertisers they have a much larger volume ofnconversation around events… the only problem is that Facebook’s security features and the nature of the algorithmically-curated News Feed mean that users are rarely seeing conversations about an event from outside their friend circle.

Facebook is taking a step toward creating a space to watch, participate in, and curate conversations around events — starting with the launch of Sports Stadium. 

With 650 million sports fans, Facebook is the world’s largest stadium. People already turn to Facebook to celebrate, commiserate, and talk trash with their friends and other fans. – Facebook Sports Stadium Press Release 


The What

Users will be able to see stats, clips, expert commentary, and posts from other fans in the experience, which is launching for “American Football” now.

The So What?

While this is relegated to sports right now, it’s easy to see how Facebook could easily port these moments-based conversation extravaganzas to things like the Academy Awards, political debates, and national events/holidays. 

Why Should Advertisers Care?

These new experiences provide the future opportunity for sponsorship of events (think Red Bull having Stadium-like events for their Soap Box Derby thing), ad inclusion via sponsored content within the experiences (think stats brought to you by Bing), and through more traditional display-type ads within the experience (think Click Here to Win an iPad).