Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Ali.
1. Ford – marketing to a mature audience
With the help of Cambridge University’s engineering design centre, Ford motor company has developed a very clever Third Age Suit which allows the wearer to experience life as a much older person. Now in its third generation, the suit can be adjusted to replicate different ages and conditions including restricting movement, vision and hearing. The idea came about because the company’s engineers tend to be much younger people who don’t understand what it’s like to live with arthritis or other physical disabilities.
Ford has already started to make real adjustment to its vehicles on the basis of its engineers wearing the suit, such as replacing the ignition key with a button, new braking technology and redesigned door handles.
Whether this is just a well-executed PR campaign or more scientific I’m not clear, but what’s for sure is that the baby boomer generation have money to spend and won’t want to give up their independence easily. Smart companies like Ford will do well to keep at least one eye on this target market.
2. Goodwill’s anti-Valentine’s campaign
With Valentine’s Day just a couple of days off, Goodwill’s campaign caught my eye. The organisation is a US not-for-profit which has charity retail outlets where people can donate and buy household items and clothes in order to raise money to help individuals benefit from work-related training and education.
The tongue-in-cheek campaign called ‘Donate Your Ex’s Stuff’ invites the broken-hearted to turn their ‘hate’ into ‘donate’ and it’s getting loads of online coverage and juicy links. A company spokespersons said: “Break-ups are never easy – it is important to get rid of the items that keep exes stuck in the past, releasing the emotional and actual baggage that keeps them from moving on to new and better days.”
Clever, timely and amusing… wishing the US Goodwill lots of UK goodwill.
3. Twitter’s new timeline
There are a few skeptics out there (and also here at Browser Media) who believe that Twitter is just becoming a lot of unnecessary white noise. In an attempt to prove them wrong, and prior to announcing its quarterly results, Twitter has updated its algorithm to serve more relevant content at the top of timelines rather than just in chronological order. How Twitter chooses these ‘most relevant’ tweets and how many there will be is a rather unknown quantity at the moment but it will be linked to who the user engages and interacts with most and the types of topics they follow.
In addition, the social media platform is also rolling out a new promoted video stream in order to improve its ad revenues. The video ads, called ‘First View’ will remain live at the top of Twitter streams for 24 hours – supposedly allowing advertisers to reach the whole of Twitter users in a short space of time. These prime slots are no doubt going to be big bucks and due to the very nature of them being video only, experts are predicting that they are likely most appeal to the entertainment industry for the release of new films or computer games.
Roll out begins almost imminently in the US.
4. EU ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling
Google has announced that under the EU ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling, it will now ensure that accepted blocking requests will now also be invisible on any of Google’s domains where the search request is in same European country as the original blocking request. Previously, Google only blocked information in the country where the initial request was received (i.e. Google.fr for France or Google.es for Spain) but the searcher could still the information on the .com domain.
5. Slow Mo Guys
In other silencing news that will make you simultaneously cringe and jump out of your seat, The Slow Mo Guys have released a new video. It’s called Tongue in a Mousetrap and it really doesn’t need any more of an introduction than that. Don’t try this at home folks as it does prevent you from talking properly!
