Archives par mot-clé : marketing

Rosario Dawson Spoofed The Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad…18 Years Ago

Video Marketing,

Pepsi has not quenched the world’s thirst for an explanation of exactly what their marketing department was thinking with that now-pulled protest-themed ad starring Kendall Jenner. Treated as a good idea by who knows how many decision-makers at the soda conglomerate, and approximately zero members of the general public, the commercial will surely one day be taught in advertising courses as an example of what not to do.

It’s even more perplexing considering that the idea of shooting a soft drink ad set at some sort of protest was an idea that was lambasted 18 years ago, as Rosario Dawson quickly pointed out.

After all, she had starred in The Chemical Brothers’ music video that had done just that. The clip was for « Out of Control, » the fourth single from the big beat group’s 1999 album Surrender, and featured vocals from New Order bassist Bernard Sumner. Dawson was the first to make the connection on Twitter.

Indeed, the video stars Dawson and actor Michael Brown as two, young revolutionaries who can’t seem to keep their hands off each other even as they’re fighting an army that represents a ruling class that can’t seem to keep its hands off the means of production. Indeed, the Mexico City shot clip took its visual cues from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, an actual leftist revolutionary group active in Mexico during the ’90s.

Oh, right, the two stars also can’t seem to get enough of the fictional soda Viva.

The video climaxes as Dawson distracts an approaching battalion of armed men in riot cop formation by sexily chugging down the soda. Meanwhile, Brown’s character sneaks up on them and launches a Molotov cocktail in a soda glass.

Except, surprise, turns out it’s just a soda advertisement, and the protesters and armed forces wind up all happily chugging down the « 100% chemical » drink together in the end. Until of course the camera pulls out to reveal the ad was playing in an electronics store window right before another protest.

There exists no deep dives or think pieces into the music video’s meaning on the easily searchable internet, nor any interviews with anyone involved, but it’s not hard to imagine what the joke of the video was supposed to be.

The youth of the time was notoriously disillusioned with advertising and keenly aware of marketing manipulation, so brands tried to reach the young Gen X and older Millennial youth with untraditional « guerrilla advertising » and « rebel marketing. » In fact, the music video would have been shot just a few years after Coca Cola’s notoriously failed attempt to launch OK Soda, which they tried to aim squarely at the counter culture youth through supposedly quirky and offbeat marketing.

The joke of the video: « What if brands went a step forward and used actual guerrilla rebel imagery in their advertising? » Such a ’90s electro music video concept.

Today’s teens seem to be a bit more chill with being marketed to. As a Google study recently informed us, cool teens absolutely love their cool brands. « Gen Z believe and rely on brands to shape their world, » the report informs us. (Incidentally, the teens actually think that Pepsi is pretty cool. It got a « cool score » of 6.5, making it cooler than Beats by Dre, Forever 21 and Buzzfeed. Or at least it was until before the Jenner ad).

There’s no excusing the advertisement, but you can at least imagine why Pepsi thought it might be a good idea to earnestly connect with young consumers in this kind of way. Indeed, Pepsi is far from the first brand to try to leverage some vague commitment to social justice alongside the popularity of a young influencer, they just were misguided in their approach. Whereas past generations didn’t want to know they were being marketed to at all, Gen Z might be a little bit more open to it if the brand presents itself in a way that’s authentic, relatable and representative of sharing their values. Pepsi, though, just seemingly put this information into a blender alongside a lot of buzzwords and trending tropics.

What we’re left with is an ad intended for Gen Z that is a surreal unintentional remake of a video taking the piss out of advertising from a Gen X and Gen Y perspective.

Of course, it’s advertisers themselves that like to perpetuate the idea that different generations respond to advertising differently, but the truth of the matter is no generation wants tone-deaf, appropriative marketing.

Related: Pepsi Pulls Controversial Kendall Jenner Ad

Watch W’s Trending Videos:

Rice denies compiling, leaking names of Trump officials from intelligence reports

Video Marketing,

Former Obama national security adviser Susan E. Rice said Tuesday that she “absolutely” never sought to uncover “for political purposes” the names of Trump campaign or transition officials concealed in intelligence intercepts, and she called suggestions that she leaked those identities “completely false.”

“I leaked nothing, to nobody, and never have and never would,” Rice said in response to the latest charges and countercharges flowing from politically charged investigations into Russian interference in the presidential election.

Since they were first reported over the weekend, the Rice reports have quickly overtaken the steady drumbeat of revelations about connections to Moscow that have dogged President Trump for months. On Tuesday, the subject dominated cable news and flooded Twitter.

“RICE ORDERED SPY DOCS ON TRUMP?” the president retweeted, with a link to the Daily Caller and a Drudge Report headlined “Boiled Rice.”

A number of Republican lawmakers said that Rice should be called to testify before congressional inquiries into what U.S. intelligence has said were Russian efforts not only to roil the presidential race, but also to tip the scales in Trump’s favor.

“If the reports are right, then she will be of interest to us,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which, along with its House counterpart and the FBI, is investigating the matter.

“When it comes to Susan E. Rice, you need to verify, not trust,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said in an interview with Fox News. “I think every American should know whether or not the national security adviser to President Obama was involved in unmasking Trump transition figures for political purposes.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), called Rice the “Typhoid Mary of the Obama administration.”

Beyond Trump’s tweets, however, the White House was uncharacteristically restrained on the subject, as its media and Capitol Hill allies expressed outrage on its behalf. “It’s not for me to decide who should testify or how they should do it,” press secretary Sean Spicer said.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the attention focused on Rice a diversionary tactic. He has also called on the Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R), a Trump transition official and fellow Californian, to recuse himself from the investigation. The White House, Schiff said, has a “strong desire . . . that we lose our focus, that we not pursue the investigation of Russia, particularly as it might impact the Trump campaign.”

At the same time, Schiff told CNN, Rice has long been a target of what he called the “Breitbart crowd . . . the hard right” since the September 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. Four U.S. officials were killed in an extremist attack that Rice initially described as an anti-American protest that evolved into violence.

White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon is the former chairman of Breitbart News, which he has described as “the platform for the alt-right,” an antiglobalist movement that seeks a whites-only state.

Asked Tuesday whether she was willing to testify, Rice told MSNBC, “Let’s see what comes.” Investigations on “Russian involvement in our electoral process are very important, they’re very serious, and every American ought to have an interest in those investigations going wherever the evidence indicates they should,” she said.

“I have an interest as an American citizen, as a former official,” Rice said. “I would want to be helpful in that process if I could.”

The focus on Rice comes as lawmakers are trying to iron out why Nunes went to the White House two weeks ago to view documents that he later said suggested that the names of Trump transition team members had been improperly “unmasked.” Top officials can ask intelligence agencies to reveal the names to them for national security or other reasons.

The term refers to revealing a name that has been blacked out in an intelligence surveillance report. The law does not permit surveillance of U.S. people without a warrant; if one shows up in authorized surveillance of a foreign person, it is “masked.”

News media reports on contacts between Russia and Trump associates, including in The Washington Post, have included names said to have appeared in intelligence reports — either persons named in conversations between foreigners, or conversations directly between foreigners and U.S. persons.

Most prominent among them is former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, whose ­December phone conversations with Russia’s ambassador in Washington included references to U.S. sanctions imposed under President Barack Obama. After a Post report on the conversations, Trump ousted Flynn for mischaracterizing them to Vice President Pence.

Trump later charged that he, himself, had been surveilled under orders from Obama, who allegedly was seeking to undermine him. The administration has said repeatedly that attention should be focused on who unmasked and leaked, rather than on the information revealed.

After Nunes’s statement about the unmasking, The Post reported last week that at least three White House officials were involved in handling the files shown to him. On Monday, a report by Bloomberg View suggested that those officials began examining the files after discovering that Rice, while working as Obama’s national security adviser, had requested the names be unmasked.

The Daily Caller followed with a report, sourced to former U.S. attorney Joe DiGenova and “other official sources,” that said that Rice ordered U.S. spy agencies to produce “detailed spreadsheets” of phone calls involving Trump and his aides.

The White House immediately drew attention to a PBS interview in which Rice, on the same day as Nunes’s statement about the documents, said, “I know nothing about this.”

Speaking Tuesday to MSNBC, Rice said that she, like other top officials in all administrations, sometimes asked for names of U.S. persons that had been blacked out in intelligence reports — “on every topic under the sun when it seemed relevant” — when necessary to “protect the American people and do our jobs.”

“Let me give you an example — completely made up,” she said. “Let’s say there was a conversation between two foreigners about a conversation they were having about an American who was proposing to sell to them high-tech bomb-making equipment.

“Now, if that came to me as the national security adviser, it would matter enormously — is that some kook sitting in his living room communicating via the Internet to sell something he doesn’t have, or is this a serious person or company or entity with the ability to provide this technology perhaps to an adversary? That would be an example of how it is necessary knowing who that person was to assess that information.”

“I can’t say that the pace of unmasking requests” rose during the Trump transition, Rice said. But, she said, “the pace of intelligence reports on Russian interference efforts increased” beginning in late summer. Intelligence officials went back to rescrub the reports after Obama requested a compilation of them, which was delivered in January, she said.

“There was no spreadsheet, nothing of the sort,” Rice said.

“The allegation is that somehow Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes,” she said. “Absolutely false.”

Chemical attack kills dozens in Syria as victims foam at the mouth, activists say

Video Marketing,

BEIRUT — Scores of Syrians, many of them women and young children, were killed Tuesday in one of the deadliest chemical attacks of the country’s six-year war, according to doctors, rescue workers and witnesses.

Airstrikes on the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun began just after daybreak, delivering an unidentified chemical agent that killed at least 58 people and filled clinics across the area with patients foaming at the mouth or struggling to breathe.

President Trump blamed the attack, which he said was carried out by the Syrian government, on former president Barack Obama, calling it a “consequence” of Obama’s “weakness and irresolution.” The reference was to Obama’s decision not to follow through with a threat to use military force against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after a 2012 chemical attack.

In a statement released by the White House — just days after the administration said action against Assad was not a U.S. priority — Trump called the Tuesday attack “reprehensible” and said that it “cannot be ignored by the civilized world.” At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring network, put the death toll at 58, including at least 11 children. Doctors at the scene cited higher figures, saying entire families were killed in their sleep.

Three doctors said in interviews that the symptoms they saw were far more serious than they would expect from chlorine, which Syrian government forces have used as a chemical weapon in the past. The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons expressed “serious concern” and said it was investigating.

Images from the area showed the bodies of at least a dozen men, women and children splayed across the ground between two houses. It was not possible to independently verify the reports, but video footage showed lifeless bodies wrapped in blankets and packed on the back of a truck. The youngest were wearing diapers.

In another video, several children were seen slumped on hospital beds, apparently unresponsive to the medics and chaos around them.

Syrian government warplanes in recent months have launched heavy attacks across northern Idlib province, where hundreds of thousands of civilians — many having fled other battle zones — are squeezed together among much of what remains of the armed opposition to Assad.

[‘The hospitals were slaughterhouses’: A journey into Syria’s secret torture wards]

Syria’s Foreign Ministry denied involvement in Tuesday’s attack, saying the government was committed to its obligations under the international Chemical Weapons Convention. Syria joined the convention in 2013 after launching sarin attacks on several Damascus neighborhoods — strikes that killed hundreds of civilians and pushed the United States to the brink of military intervention.

“Assad calculates, reasonably, that military dynamics play in his favor. By using chemical weapons and other weapons, he is demonstrating the powerlessness of international actors,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Congressional refusal to vote in favor of U.S. military action after Assad’s use of sarin, a nerve agent, in 2012 provided Obama with cover to withdraw his ultimatum, although he continued to call for Assad to leave power. The United States and Russia, Assad’s main backer, then negotiated a plan for the internationally supervised removal of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump criticized Obama for what he said was a waste of attention and resources on Syria’s internal struggle at the expense of the fight against the Islamic State. Late last week, ­Haley said the U.S. priority was no longer to “focus on getting Assad out,” while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the Syrian people should decide Assad’s future.

A senior State Department official told reporters Tuesday that Assad has committed “war crimes” and blamed his Russian and Iranian backers for failing to control him. Those two countries are “guarantors” of a cease-fire they negotiated, the official said, but “clearly, they are not able to deliver.”

“That’s a very significant problem. Obviously that’ll be something that we’ll be looking at and discussing and reviewing,” said the official, who noted that Tillerson will visit Moscow this month. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the State Department.

The attack came as European diplomats gathered in Brussels for a flagship conference aimed at pledging billions of dollars for Syria’s reconstruction, six years into a civil conflict that has shattered much of the country and prompted refugees to pour out across the Middle East and Europe.

Photographs of lifeless bodies in Khan Sheikhoun were passed from phone to phone in the Brussels conference hall, attendees said, a stark reminder of the limitations of European power in a war now heavily driven by Iranian and Russian influence. 

In Washington, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) echoed Trump’s criticism of Obama, saying that the former president had “figuratively jumped in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s lap” to agree on the weapons withdrawal.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that “Assad believes he can commit war crimes with impunity,” and he challenged Trump to take action. The question now confronting Washington, he said, “is whether we will take any action to disabuse him of this murderous notion.” 

[Syrian defector comes to Washington after documenting atrocities]

Doctors and activists in rebel-held areas have accused the government of sharply increasing chemical attacks across Idlib, Aleppo and Hama provinces since the end of last year.

In the Khan Sheikhoun attack, Samer al-Youssef, a resident, described watching people running toward the homes of relatives, then wrenching open the doors to find them dead inside.

“We did our best, but we couldn’t save people. Around 30 percent of those who were brought to us were dead on arrival,” said Usama Darwish, a doctor.

Although a nationwide cease-fire has technically been in place across Syria since late December, civilians and rebel groups now say it exists in name only. 

“People are terrified. They don’t know where to go,” said Ahmad Rahhal, a 22-year-old activist. “They can’t cross into Turkey because the borders are closed, but if they stay in their houses, they will be attacked by bombs. What can they do?”

As a displacement crisis burgeons on its southern border, Turkey has limited new Syrian arrivals to those seeking medical treatment, often in the wake of attacks. Reports Tuesday suggested that ambulances were lined up at the border crossing, ready to bring the next wave of casualties to Turkish hospitals.

Zakaria Zakaria in Istanbul, Heba Habib in Stockholm and William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Syrian forces used gas to help retake Aleppo, says Human Rights Watch

Even after so many deaths, chemical attack in Syria provoked visceral response

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

Prepare to Be Inspired by SoulCycle’s First Major Marketing Campaign

Video Marketing,

Looking for your daily dose of fitness inspiration? Look no further than SoulCycle’s new “Find It” campaign.

“Find It” is the fitness studio’s first major integrated marketing campaign since it was founded 11 years ago. SoulCycle worked with Laird + Partners on the campaign, which includes a two-minute hero video starring 30 or so of the studio’s instructors, short videos focused on four different SoulCycle instructors and new imagery posted around most of the brand’s studios.

“We’re really excited about the campaign,” SoulCycle CEO Melanie Whelan said. “For us, it really symbolizes an evolution of the brand and, at it’s heart, what is was meant to be—a celebration of our community.”

Earlier in the year, Whelan noted that her team took a pause to think about how far the company had come, opening 75 new locations across 15 markets in the past five years. SoulCycle wanted to capture and celebrate that journey with its first major marketing push, but also tap into the journey that all SoulCycle riders experience.

Some people may scoff at the brand—known to some for its high class prices and elite atmosphere—and its use of inspirational phrases like “you can become an athlete,” “tap into your greatness” and “find your best self” in the ad, but avid riders and curious newbies will likely be inspired by the brand’s instructors from across the country.

“What we’ve tried to do here is create creative that really speaks to what you can find on the bike and what our instructors are intending to create every time they step on the podium,” Whelan said.

Alongside the videos—which the brand will push out across its social channels and on the its “Find It” microsite—SoulCycle will also wrap most of its studios in the striking black of white images of its instructors featured in the ads.

Why marketers should focus on video’s overall role, not specific tactics

Video Marketing,

Despite a recent focus on specific digital video tactics like live streaming or 360-degree technology, the real magic of video is only really apparent for marketers when they integrate it throughout their entire content marketing strategies rather than honing one approach over another. 

Video has many applications: It can support top-of-funnel marketing like brand awareness through compelling storytelling, and it’s effective throughout the entire sales pipeline as a way to present customer stories and testimonials, as well as to answer frequently asked questions. A testimonial video might even be the impetus that drives a sale home when a shopper has placed something in an e-commerce cart but hasn’t checked out yet.

With too many use cases to list and strong consumer adoption, it’s now a given that marketers must include video in their efforts, but where exactly it best fits in and how much time and resources should be put into it will vary by brand. 

« Video content is just one piece of the puzzle of a content marketing strategy, » said Emily Ann Brown, director of media and analytics, Elasticity. « When combined with a strategic distribution [paid media] plan and other forms of content, it can be a very compelling piece of the overall marketing mix. »

The video revolution

Video has become a go-to piece in the content marketing puzzle, and for good reason. Video often serves as a more effective, compelling storytelling format than static options like still images and text. And the video revolution has been largely fueled by two technology advances — the advent of widespread broadband and the simple fact that it’s relatively easy to create, edit and share with nothing more than a smartphone.

Smartphones are also a driver of video content consumption, as mobile users have been proven to be more than happy to watch video on smaller screens. YouTube is the old guard in the space, but other social media platforms have quickly gone all-in. Facebook has made it clear it’s focused on the medium, with moves like tweaking the News Feed algorithm to emphasize video and execs making statements that they see an all-video future for the platform, especially as digital display real estate crowds up.

Facebook’s wildly popular Instagram photo-sharing app has quickly become ideal for sharing video, especially with the launch of a Stories service last August; Snapchat users similarly thrive on the vertical format that the app helped popularize.

« Video content has become so prominent recently for a variety of reasons. It is so much more conducive in telling a brand’s story than a still image could ever hope to be, » said Chris Madden, co-founder of digital marketing agency Matchnode.

« It can serve to educate, inspire, entertain, or nearly any other emotion a brand is hoping to elicit from its audience, » he said. « It creates a more personal touch — especially with the rise of live video. It really gives the consumers and fans a first-hand view of what is going on inside the life of the person or brand they are following. »

Industry publications like Marketing Dive regularly cover video as a content format, often drilling down into specific situations and tactics, such as the importance of grabbing viewers’ attention in the first few seconds of video, the value in producing super short videos of 10 seconds or less and how marketers should approach live streaming. But, given video’s importance, marketers also need to understand how video content fits into a far bigger picture.

Where video ultimately shines most in a content marketing strategy is its ability to bring more interaction for users and to illustrate concepts that can’t be properly communicated with still imagery or words. 

« Brands who have a complex message must include video as part of their content marketing strategy in order to break through the very low level of attention that users have online and fully communicate the benefits of their brand, » Brown said. 

Making video part of a content marketing strategy

To get started, Madden suggested developing a couple of primary,  evergreen video assets that can be promoted for a year or more.

« Once those two assets are created and solid, most SMBs shouldn’t get bogged down in continually creating new videos, » he said.

In terms of cost, the general wisdom is that when spending $1 in production, plan on spending at least $1 for promotion, per Madden. As for overall content resource allocation, he leans toward pushing 30% of a marketing budget to video assets and the rest around image-focused call-to-action ads and content like blog posts, but there are no hard and fast rules.

As for types of video to include in a content strategy, top-of-funnel « intro » videos, live streaming and Snapchat spots work, along with product demos, webinars and educational video. Overall, the mix depends on the business.

Brown recommended using short-form video to draw viewers to long-form content for deeper brand engagement.  

« Brands can’t expect users to spend several minutes or more with their content without a proper short-form introduction, » she said. 

Share, share, share

If a video gets produced and placed online and no one watches it, did it ever really exist? Philosophical questions aside, both Madden and Brown emphasized the importance of getting video in front of eyeballs.

« Share it liberally, » said Madden. « It’s not enough to just post a new video to Facebook and hope it takes off. Put some ad budget behind it and get it in front of both your existing audience, as well as prospective members of your audience. »

Retargeting is another successful tactic, per Madden, who said watching a video is a highly engaging activity, but segmenting that audience further to find people who are the most invested allows marketers to better serve that segment and help them with a future purchasing decision.

« We love using Facebook Custom Audience to retarget our most committed video viewers, » he said. « We will create an audience of those who’ve viewed 75%-plus of the video and retarget them later with a different video showcasing more reasons why they should love our brand. »

Given that video appears on different platforms in different ways such as through autoplay with sound or no sound, Brown suggested taking sound into account and editing video to be easily interpreted without sound.

« About 85% of all video views consumed on Facebook are viewed without sound. As marketers, it’s our job to understand how people are using the medium and adapt our content accordingly, » Brown said. « Marketers who aren’t considering a soundless experience for their videos are missing out on an opportunity to engage with users who may never hear the audio of their content. »

Madden recommends focusing on Facebook, as the platform is paying more mind to the medium. He also mentioned that Facebook’s video analytics are strong and likely to deepen in the coming months, particularly with data around autoplay and volume, potentially accounting for when a viewer turns the volume on or off.

Video produced for content marketing can also be repurposed for advertising as long as that use is planned out in advance, said Brown. And, like all marketing assets, video pushes will only be successful if marketers track performance and evolve their approach based on data.

« Marketing teams need to clearly identify the objectives for each video being produced before production so the production teams can get footage that delivers upon the communication objectives and distribution methods of each video, » Brown said.

Live video has become the creative canvas for digital marketers

Video Marketing,


Digital marketing has become a world where data often overruns the creative process. A/B (or even A/B/C/D) testing every element in a campaign sometimes becomes the obsession, relegating the ideas to simply more variables to test. Many marketers crave creativity, big ideas and innovation.

Well, jump into the live video pool, folks, because this is where the innovation is happening today.

With the growth of live video, that process has been turned on its head in just the past couple of years. Brands are innovating across many elements of communications and campaigns.

From internal launch planning to massive live e-commerce events, the real-time nature of live video not only allows for more feedback on these efforts, but also — for some brands — more (calculated) risks to be taken. The proverbial safety net of prepackaged, highly planned content, once the inhibitor of innovation, is gone. And it is exhilarating again to be a marketer!

Disrupting digital marketing

Live video has become the creative canvas for digital marketers to embrace new means of delivering branded content. Don’t believe it? There’s a new live campaign happening every week that challenges what we thought we knew about the space. Some of the more recent examples:

Capitalizing on the real-time nature of the NCAA Tournament, Snapchat brought fans creative ways to trash-talk rivals through the platform all throughout the first two rounds. They could also add custom, geotagged snaps from all 64 campuses — bringing local flavor and fans in on the action as many early games came down to the wire.

Twitch, Amazon’s livestream platform, continues to diversify itself as a portal for unique video broadcasts. The latest example was its live stream of all 23 seasons of Power Rangers — a project backed by Twitch, to bring itself into the wider conversation around the film’s arrival in theaters in late March.

Jewelry brand David Yurman paid Elle to unveil its new line live on the publication’s Facebook page, in an event that was hosted by Instagram stylists.

And those are all just examples from the past few weeks.

Unbound by the fears of getting the editing just right or the messaging perfectly worded within preproduced content, these events come off as authentic and honest. In the case of the Power Rangers stream, which only features the show’s full library, the uninterrupted feed is a novelty that users can pop into and out of as they please.

Are there huge Power Rangers fans who will find a way to tune into each and every one of the episodes from all 23 seasons? Sure. Those super-users aren’t the risk here, though. It’s who else will bother to tune in. Without live streaming, the cost and planning needed to go into that sort of event could be crippling for any brand — especially a growing one like Twitch.

There is innovation going on elsewhere in digital marketing. Pre-produced video still provides opportunities to connect and share with customers through a visual and interactive medium. In-person marketing initiatives have shown themselves to be game for new ideas, but they’re tethered by geography. Even something that seems completely confined to one user’s device, like last year’s Pokémon Go craze, is based on where you are and the number of people (other users) you’re with at the time.

It’s time to go live

Live experiences have become the showcase for how marketers can cultivate active, captive audiences. Plenty of brands are already on board, but there are still more holdouts left across every vertical.

With the easy tools at everyone’s disposal today, there’s no excuse for companies to sit it out on live. Failure to jump in and give it a try has become comparable to handing your competition a distinct advantage.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Susan Rice requested to unmask names of Trump transition officials, sources say

Video Marketing,

Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security adviser under then-President Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance.

The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then sent to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan – essentially, the officials at the top, including former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes.

The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office. 

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice addresses Libya violence at the White House Monday. (Fox News Photo)Expand / Contract

Rice was ambassador to the UN when she went on Sunday news shows to say the Benghazi attack was prompted by a video.

(Fox News Photo)

It was not clear how Rice knew to ask for the names to be unmasked, but the question was being posed by the sources late Monday. 

« What I know is this …  If the intelligence community professionals decide that there’s some value, national security, foreign policy or otherwise in unmasking someone, they will grant those requests, » former Obama State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor Marie Harf told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum on « The First 100 Days. « And we have seen no evidence … that there was partisan political notice behind this and we can’t say that unless there’s actual evidence to back that up. »

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, asked about the revelations at Monday’s briefing, declined to comment specifically on what role Rice may have played or officials’ motives.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. is pursued by reporters as he arrives for a weekly meeting of the Republican Conference with House Speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP leadership, Tuesday, March 28, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Nunes is facing growing calls to step away from the panel's Russia investigation as revelations about a secret source meeting on White House grounds raised questions about his and the panel's independence. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)Expand / Contract

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., says he has seen incidental surveillance reports he fears were used for political reasons.

(The Associated Press)

“I’m not going to comment on this any further until [congressional] committees have come to a conclusion,” he said, while contrasting the media’s alleged “lack” of interest in these revelations with the intense coverage of suspected Trump-Russia links. 

When names of Americans are incidentally collected, they are supposed to be masked, meaning the name or names are redacted from reports – whether it is international or domestic collection, unless it is an issue of national security, crime or if their security is threatened in any way. There are loopholes and ways to unmask through backchannels, but Americans are supposed to be protected from incidental collection. Sources told Fox News that in this case, they were not.

This comes in the wake of Evelyn Farkas’ television interview last month in which the former Obama deputy secretary of defense said in part: “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill – it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration.”

Meanwhile, Fox News also is told that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes knew about unmasking and leaking back in January, well before President Trump’s tweet in March alleging wiretapping.

Nunes has faced criticism from Democrats for viewing pertinent documents on White House grounds and announcing their contents to the press. But sources said “the intelligence agencies slow-rolled Nunes. He could have seen the logs at other places besides the White House SCIF [secure facility], but it had already been a few weeks. So he went to the White House because he could protect his sources and he could get to the logs.”

As the Obama administration left office, it also approved new rules that gave the NSA much broader powers by relaxing the rules about sharing intercepted personal communications and the ability to share those with 16 other intelligence agencies.

Rice is no stranger to controversy. As the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, she appeared on several Sunday news shows to defend the adminstration’s later debunked claim that the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Libya was triggered by an Internet video.

Rice also told ABC News in 2014 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl « served the United States with honor and distinction » and that he « wasn’t simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield. »

Bergdahl is currently facing court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for allegedly walking off his post in Afghanistan.

Adam Housley joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in 2001 and currently serves as a Los Angeles-based senior correspondent.

Democrats secure enough votes to block Gorsuch, setting stage for ‘nuclear’ option

Video Marketing,

Senate Democrats secured enough votes Monday to filibuster the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court, making it all but certain that Republicans will change the rules of the chamber to ensure his confirmation later this week.

Democratic opposition to Gorsuch has been building for days, and four more senators announced Monday that they would vote against him. That gives Democrats the requisite 41 senators to block a procedural vote and compel President Trump and Republicans either to withdraw Gorsuch’s nomination or to change Senate rules to eliminate the 60-vote requirement.

“This is a new low,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in response to Democratic opposition. But he also reiterated his vow that Gorsuch will be confirmed by Friday despite the likelihood of a filibuster. That’s because McConnell is prepared to invoke what is known as the “nuclear option” — a change in rules to allow ­Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed with a simple majority vote. With 52 seats, Republicans would then have enough votes to secure Trump’s first selection for the high court.

The procedural vote known as cloture has long set the Senate apart from the House of Representatives — and it has long been hailed by members of the upper chamber for requiring bipartisan cooperation, and forcing consensus, on major legislation or confirmation votes.

If that step is eliminated, the Senate is “headed to a world where you don’t need one person from the other side to pick a judge,” warned Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). “And what does that mean? That means the ­judges are going to be more ideological, not less. It means that every Senate seat is going to be a referendum on the Supreme Court. . . . The damage done to the Senate is going to be real.”

McConnell won’t be the first to go nuclear, however. Now-retired Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) first invoked the option in 2013 when he was majority leader, allowing non-Supreme Court presidential appointments to be confirmed with a simple majority.

And McConnell will probably face more pressure to eliminate the 60-vote requirement in other cases — on budget bills, for instance, or on any legislation at all. If that happens, the need for bipartisan cooperation could disappear entirely from the Senate.

Graham’s comments came as the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to refer Gorsuch’s nomination to the full Senate, which is expected to begin debating the pick Tuesday. The procedural step that Democrats have the votes to block is expected by Thursday, but if McConnell at that point seeks a rules change — which would succeed with a simple majority — it would start the clock for a final confirmation vote Friday.

[How many votes Democrats need to block Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination]

The outcome of the Judiciary Committee’s vote was never in doubt — Republicans hold a majority of seats on the panel, and Gorsuch was approved on a ­party-line vote. But the testy hearing foreshadowed what is likely to be a combative floor debate over the merits of Trump’s selection and the way both parties have behaved during years of feuding over the makeup of the federal court system.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) indicated Monday that they would oppose Gorsuch and vote against cloture — the motion to end a filibuster that is required to hold an up-or-down confirmation vote.

During an hours-long committee hearing, Leahy criticized Gorsuch’s answers during his marathon confirmation hearing as “excruciatingly evasive.” He said that a GOP move to end filibusters of Supreme Court nominees would damage the Senate, but he argued that he had to vote his conscience, even if it pushes Republicans to change the rules.

Judge Neil Gorsuch prepares to testify during the third day of his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

“I cannot vote solely to protect an institution when the rights of hard-working Americans are at risk,” he said, “because I fear that the Senate I would be defending no longer exists.”

[Home stretch for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee could forever alter the Senate]

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) shot back, blaming Democrats for years of partisan bickering over judicial nominees that he said started when President George W. Bush made several nominations for federal court vacancies.

“I disagree with those who somehow say this is the end of the Senate as we know it,” Cornyn said. “This is a restoration of the status quo ante before our Democratic colleagues directed this artificial 60-vote requirement.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) dismissed Republican attempts to blame Democrats for the change.

“I’m sure we could trace it all the way back to the Hamilton-Burr duel,” he quipped.

“The answer isn’t to change the rules,” Schumer added. “The answer is to change the nominee.”

In a sign that there is almost no hope of ending the impasse without a rules change, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — who helped quell previous fights about judicial nominees — said that this time, he is standing with fellow Republicans.

“I have to. I have no choice,” he told reporters. He said he would have to vote for the change “because we need to confirm Gorsuch.”

McCain has been part of fruitless attempts to reach a bipartisan agreement in recent days, including consultations with Coons and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.) late last week. McCain told reporters that he was part of a similar conversation Monday, but he did not elaborate.

Manchin is one of three moderate Democrats who plan to vote for Gorsuch, and with Republicans, to end the filibuster. Manchin and the other two moderates, Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), have been the focus of a $10 million ad campaign by the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, which is pressuring Democrats facing reelection next year in states that Trump won in November to vote for Gorsuch.

Meanwhile, Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) on Monday became the fourth Democrat to say he would join Republicans in trying to end the filibuster. But in a sign of the incredible political pressure he faces as he votes on a nominee from his home state, Bennet did not say whether he plans to support or oppose Gorsuch. He has also faced pressure from JCN to back Gorsuch. So far, he is the only Democratic senator to oppose the filibuster who is not up for reelection in 2018.

[Democrats just took the filibuster off life support]

Carrie Severino, JCN’s chief counsel and policy director, said Monday that in the face of “unprecedented obstruction by Democrats, Republicans now have no choice but to invoke the ‘constitutional option’ ” — the nuclear option — to confirm Gorsuch.

Gorsuch was nominated by Trump on Jan. 31 and spent weeks privately meeting with senators and preparing for his confirmation hearings. He was questioned by the Judiciary Committee last month for almost 20 hours over three days, answering nearly 1,200 questions and later sending about 70 pages of answers to written follow-up questions, according to a team of White House officials assisting with his nomination.

As of Friday, Gorsuch had met with 78 senators — all but some of the most conservative and liberal lawmakers, whose votes are likely to fall along party lines. But three first-term Democratic senators, Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) and Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), complained that they were unable to get a face-to-face meeting with the nominee or were not offered the opportunity.

The two big, misleading statements senators can’t stop making in the Neil Gorsuch battle

This week’s anticipated change in Senate procedure dates to 2013, when Democrats, angered by Republican opposition to then-President Obama’s nominees voted to end filibusters of executive branch and lower-court nominees. Republicans warned then that there might one day be retribution.

“Changing the rules is almost inevitable; it’s only a question of when,” said Norm Ornstein, a longtime congressional expert and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Ornstein warned that with Republicans set to extend the filibuster ban to Supreme Court nominees, they may soon face pressure to end filibusters of legislation to keep major health-care and tax reform bills passed by the GOP-led House from stalling in the more closely divided Senate.

McConnell “will resist the change in some cases because it’s in his interest not only when he’s in the minority again but also to be able to rely on Democrats when the House sends you crazy things,” Ornstein said. “And because it’s not clear they have the 51 votes necessary to change the rules for filibusters on legislation.”

But McConnell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that “I don’t think the legislative filibuster is in danger.”

Schumer, appearing on the same program, agreed. “I don’t think there’s any thirst to change the legislative rules,” he said. “Most Democrats and most Republicans have served in both the minority and majority and know what it means.”

Amber Phillips contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost