Curator News Feed: June 21, 2013
This week, among other things, we celebrated our neck of the woods' mouth-watering new lunch haunts (take that, Capitol Hill), envied one lucky Curator's weekend getaway, and dreamt about exotic vacations of our own: all things that may be best captured with an artsy Instagram-filtered video (or not -- see infographic). Take a moment to relax on this Summer Solstice with our links of the week.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure Cancels Half Its Races, TIME. I said it a year ago and I’ll say it again…impacts from a poor PR decision can be felt for years to come… (and it’s too bad when it happens to a group that does so much good). – Dan
Instagram Launches 15-Second Video Sharing Feature, with 13 Filters and Editing, TechCrunch. Move over Vine, Instagram now lets you share videos more than twice as long. And, just as Instagram allowed those of us who don’t even own a camera to start taking pictures like a pro, the video capability also comes with 13 filters and video editing. All sounds good, right? Well, according to NPR, maybe not. Like with the evolution of any technology there is fear that with this change also comes some skepticism. I’m looking forward to diving into a bit further and learning more ways on how this can be leveraged from a PR-standpoint. – Annie
A Great Way to Keep Track of and Show Off the Exotic Places One Has Been To, PSFK. At Curator, we’re fortunate to work with some great travel brands. Part of our day-to-day job is to come up with ways to inspire people to think about where in the world they’d like to travel. This week, I came across this map, and loved the concept of a visual way to showcase every country you’ve visited. Once you’ve traveled to a country, you scratch off a layer of gold foil to reveal the colorful map below. If you’re heading out on a great adventure this summer, you may want to get yourself a Scratch Map. – Ann Marie
Monkey Light Pro-Bicycle Wheel Display System, Kickstarter. I love browsing Kickstarter to see all the cool (and weird) stuff people come up with. Stumbled upon this earlier this week and thought it was an interesting concept that could be really awesome for brands. Would be pretty awesome to see a triathlon or a bike race with people riding bikes with unique sponsor messaging. – Chelsey
The Eater California Wine Country Heatmap: Where to Eat Right Now, Eater. This weekend is my wife's birthday and we're heading down to Napa to eat incredible food and drink great wine. Over the course of the next three days you'll find me on this map somewhere. Enjoy the weekend! – Scott
eHarmony Takes Care of their Followers, Facebook. Today, a planned eHarmony server upgrade didn't go as smoothly as expected and their site crashed, so they took to Facebook (primarily) to keep users informed as to what was going on. Here's their page — scroll through this week's posts to get a sense of what they did. Two big takeaways: 1) This is one of the reasons it's so important to cultivate your social media communities. They can act as emergency meet-up spots if something ever goes wrong on your website — but not if you don't take care of them the other 99.9 percent of the time. 2) eHarmony was proactive, and made sure to let everyone know ahead of time that they'd be doing work on the site. That kind of nuts-and-bolts status updating is extremely helpful when people are expecting service from you, and you know that service might be interrupted. – Paul
It's Hip to be Pioneer Square, Seattle Magazine. I was feeling the love for our neighborhood this Friday, and then happened across this article about Pioneer Square, so freaking square it's hip. They call out some of our office favorites like Matt Dillion's Bar Sajor and Russ Flint's Rainshadow Meats, and couldn't help but share. – Maria
Build a Movement, Not a Campaign, and You'll Ignite Passion in Your Brand's True Believers, Fast Company. This is a great read that pinpoints the difference between influencers and advocates and also details the how, when and why to employ each group for different purposes in a brand campaign, based on your campaign goals. I like the description of brand advocates as a "volunteer marketing army." Activating your already passionate brand advocates makes plenty of sense, as these are the fans who are more apt to spread the word on behalf of your brand based on pure passion and loyalty, rather than direct incentive. Cultivating a relationship with these advocates takes time and effort, but the rewards tend to pay more dividends in the long run. – Noelle
A strongman from Hungary has managed to pull a 50-ton commercial plane using just his teeth, Metro. Whenever I am looking for some weird news, I know I can always turn to my other favorite part of the world: Europe. They did not disappoint. You’ve got this bionic “strongman,” a pink plane, and a gang of Wizz Air cheerleaders adding some extra pep. Is this Superman in real life? – Megan