LOUISVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Macon closes the doors to its Main Street Community and Houston is wanting to open more doors for downtown growth.
On the other hand, Main Street is the heartbeat for Louisville and showcases successful growth.
When you drive through the heart of Louisville, window after window is decorated with merchandise, and every building downtown is filled with a variety of businesses.
“When they ride down and they see every building is full, it’s just, it’s great for your city. It’s great for your town. It’s great for your county because that’s the heart of your community and you want it to be active and vibrant and that attracts people to your community,” says Winston County’s Marketing and Event Specialist, Amy Hillyer.
A combination of economic and community development is a big reason for the success of Main Street.
“Merchants, who are dedicated to our community. We have many businesses that have been on our Main Street 20, 30, 40, 50, up to 80 years and we also have a wonderful community, who see the importance of a vibrant Main Street, meaning that they shop in town. They want to shop with the people who support our community,” says Hillyer.
Stephanie’s Shenanigans is one of those Main Street mainstays.
The owner may have been raised in Florida, but Mississippi is where her heart is and where she got serious with an Ole Miss football player, who became her husband.
The couple planted their roots in Louisville around thirty years ago.
“One of the fellows that Tim played football with was from here. He use to come home and visit with him some and they went into business together, but that business didn’t work out for it to be a long term thing. We just know that the Lord used that to bring us here and it wasn’t this business and so when we opened this one, actually, I was a wholesaler before I was a retailer on Main Street,” says Stephanie’s Shenanigans owner, Stephanie Smith.
Smith says the hometown feel is what keeps residents shopping local and what brings outsiders to town.
“I really think because Louisville has a lot of locally owned businesses. We’re thankful for those who’ve come in, who are not and that’s fine, but I think locally owned people care about the people in their community and just the service with a smile.”
Hillyer says promotions also help attract people to Main Street.
Louisville is having one next week called Girls Night in the Moonlight, which is an after hours event for guests to shop and get a discount in participating stores.
Live streaming can greatly benefit the use of influence marketing.
Influencer marketing is a common method for reaching highly engaged online audiences, but many companies are still trying to fine-tune the best methods for cashing in on influencers and their popularity. Live streaming offers a fresh and effective way to pull influencers into your campaigns. When well-trusted influencers and compelling live streams come together, it’s almost impossible for audiences to look away. Discover some of the fascinating ways that live streaming is shaping the face of influencer marketing campaigns.
Make Influencers More Accessible To Audiences
Live streaming allows viewers to engage with popular influencers on a new level. An undeniable thrill exists to getting a celebrity or other popular influencer to respond to your tweet or comment. That sense of excitement amplifies when you get a live response to your questions or comments. Live streaming gives a face and voice to the content, items that are lacking in written forms of marketing.
Live streaming also trumps pre-recorded video when you need to pack a personality-driven punch. Scripted videos are just that — scripted. In a live stream, you have an added sense of uncertainty and anticipation because you don’t know what will happen next.
Influencer Brian Fanzo gave a compelling example of how conversations can derail in a live video stream. Fanzo was attempting to give a backstage tour via live stream when viewers began steering the conversation toward his smartphone. Adapting quickly, Fanzo went with the flow and said, « We started talking about technology because that is where participants wanted to go. » Working with an influencer for live video marketing campaigns makes both the host and your brand more accessible to audiences in an authentic and compelling way.
Create Content With Quantitative ROI
The ROI of influencer marketing is often difficult to measure. However, live streaming is one area where you can get measurable results that offer valuable information for crafting future campaigns. By the third quarter of 2015, year-over-year ad views had increased 113 % for live video. In 2016, 81% of internet audience members viewed more live content than they did the previous year. By 2021, the live streaming industry could reach $70.05 billion.
Live streaming is an outstanding way to reach the online audience. The technique has massive appeal for viewers, drawing them in far more than traditional online videos. Videos on Facebook Live get viewed for three times as long as a pre-recorded video.
At first glance, live streaming may seem like another form of entertainment, but the possibilities go much deeper. Companies can use powerful influencers and live video to access audiences in many diverse industries. Twitter streamed more than 600 hours of live video in the fourth quarter of 2016. Of these hours, only 10% were entertainment, while 38% concerned news and politics, and 52% involved sports
Build Trust With Viewers
Live video comes with a generous helping of transparency. Your influencer’s voice will ring truer in a live conversation with fans than it does in a blog post. Viewers can engage with your product or service and the influencer in open conversation handled in real time.
If you’re looking for a compelling way to build trust with your audience, a live video is a great place to start. Offer a behind-the-scenes tour of your offices or production facilities. Invite an industry influencer to interview some of your staff members in a live conversation with questions and comments from viewers.
Provide Cost-Effective Access To Video Marketing
If you’re looking for an affordable way to add video to your marketing campaign? Professionally produced videos can be staggeringly expensive. Even the DIY approach takes time and video editing software. Those two elements are part of the reason why influencers love live streaming so much. All you need is a solid internet connection and quality smartphone to live stream video.
Tony Wang, co-founder of agora.io says using an influencer for your live stream adds to the value of your low-cost endeavor. « Influencers offer instant access to their highly engaged audience, » he says. « While a live stream hosted exclusively in-house will reach your own fans and followers, working with an influencer will expand your reach without leveraging the massive expense of creating a highly produced video. »
Create Hosting Opportunities For Popular Events
Working with influencers and live media streams, you can add live hosts to your events with minimum production or preparation costs. When NBC launched Hairspray Live, the network engaged 20 influencers to help hype the event. Some of these popular names hosted the event through Facebook Live while it was airing on television.
Adding an influencer stream to your event offers engaged fans a fun new way to take part in the action from a remote location. It also builds awareness of the event among those who didn’t know about it. Live streams appear at the top of social media feeds, so users receive 200% more notifications for live streams than for other activity.
Allow Influencers To Fine-Tune Marketing Strategies
Live streams give smart influencers a wealth of new opportunities for successfully promoting your brand and driving conversions. When you’re producing a scripted video, blog, or other static media post, you can edit to your heart’s content, but you’ll have to cross your fingers and hope for the best when you finally post your piece.
“In a live stream influencers can respond compellingly to feedback from the audience, » says attorney Timothy Abeel who uses live streaming. « They might answer questions, ease concerns, or simply use the viewers’ comments to make snap decisions about which direction to take as they tour your facility or show off new products. There’s nothing like offering the opportunity for potential buyers to ask their trusted influencer to demonstrate a product feature live. When the influencer responds to the viewers’ interests while keeping your company front and center, you have live media gold.”
Live video is a powerful medium that can find a place in any online marketing campaign. Adding an influencer to the mix will only make your posts more powerful. Bringing a trusted face and name into an authentic live video will allow you to reach your audience in the most personable way possible.
Rick Pitino survived the tawdriest of scandals during his tenure as coach of the Louisville men’s basketball team, first a 2009 extortion attempt during which he admitted to having sexual relations with the wife of his team’s equipment manager, then a 2015 scandal in which a former Cardinals staffer arranged for strippers and prostitutes to have sex with players and recruits in the team’s dormitory.
But Pitino could not survive allegations that, in the grand scheme of college basketball scandals, barely rise above sordid: That an executive from Adidas, which outfits the Cardinals athletic teams, and others conspired to steer top recruits to Louisville via six-figure payments to their families, in one instance enlisting the aid of one of Pitino’s assistants. Those allegations, unveiled Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York after a years-long undercover investigation by the FBI, proved to be Pitino’s undoing.
On Wednesday, Pitino reportedly was informed of his dismissal after 16 seasons, three Final Four appearances and one national championship at Louisville, likely ending a career that earned him a spot in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013. His departure, and the circumstances surrounding it, leaves one of the nation’s college basketball powerhouses on shaky ground only days before practice was to begin for the 2017-18 season, one in which the Cardinals were expected to be a top 10 team.
Tom Jurich, Louisville’s athletic director since 1997, also reportedly was fired, though a school spokesman later denied those reports and said both men officially were still employed. Both he and Pitino briefly met with Louisville interim president Greg Postel on Wednesday morning, departing with little to say to the reporters who were gathered.
Pitino’s attorney, Steve Pence, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the coach had been placed on administrative leave Wednesday and that he had been “effectively fired.” Pitino’s contract says he must be given 10 days’ notice of his termination, which only can be decided by a vote of the Louisville athletic department’s Board of Directors, and that Pitino must be allowed to “present evidence” in his defense over that 10-day span.
Depending on the cause of his dismissal, Jurich may have to be given 30 days’ notice of his dismissal, according to WRDB’s Chris Otts.
Pitino expressed dismay and surprise at the allegations Tuesday, just as he had after the revelations that former Louisville assistant Andre McGee had paid a Louisville escort to entertain the Cardinals’ players and recruits.
“These allegations come as a complete shock to me,” Pitino said in a statement released Tuesday by his lawyer, Steve Pence. “If true, I agree with the U.S. Attorney’s Office that these third-party schemes, initiated by a few bad actors, operated to commit a fraud on the impacted universities and their basketball programs, including the University of Louisville. Our fans and supporters deserve better and I am committed to taking whatever steps are needed to ensure those responsible are held accountable.”
But Louisville officials needed less than 24 hours to find that Pitino ultimately was responsible for the alleged misdeeds of his program.
The men’s basketball program is already under NCAA probation for the 2015 scandal. Pitino faced a five-game suspension during the upcoming season as part of the penalties; in addition, Louisville was ordered to return money received for NCAA tournament appearances from 2012 through 2015 and to vacate 123 wins during that period, including the 2013 national championship. The university has appealed the ruling.
Pitino, 65, found success at nearly every NCAA stop he made in a coaching career that began in the mid-1970s. At Boston University, his first head coaching job, he led the Terriers to their first NCAA tournament appearance in 24 years. Pitino parlayed that success into a two-year run at Providence, where he guided the Friars to the 1987 Final Four. Then, after a two-year run coaching the New York Knicks, he left his dream NBA job in 1989 to take over at tradition-rich but scandal-plagued Kentucky, even though he Wildcats would be banned from live television in his first season and from the NCAA tournament in his first two seasons. After that, however, Pitino quickly had Kentucky back among the nation’s elite, with a memorable Elite Eight appearance in the Wildcats’ first post-probation season and a Final Four bid the season after that, his first of three appearances in the national semifinals at the school. In 1996, he led Kentucky to its first national title in 18 years.
After a thoroughly unsuccessful four-year run as coach and team president of the Boston Celtics, he was back at another faded Kentucky power: Louisville, which had not won an NCAA tournament game in Denny Crum’s last four seasons.
More success followed, even as Louisville pinballed its way from Conference USA, to the Big East, to one season in the American Athletic Conference before finally landing securely in the ACC, the school coming out ahead in the NCAA’s football-driven conference-realignment wars even though the Cardinals’ football program has never been regarded as a power. The school’s athletic programs were buoyed financially — just like every other big-time NCAA program — by their apparel agreement with a major athletic brand, in this case Adidas, a relationship began in the mid-1990s and continued throughout Pitino’s tenure. Last month, the school announced that its athletes would continue to sport the brand in a deal worth $160 million over 10 years.
Ironically, Pitino decried the shoe companies’ presence in basketball recruiting, where prospects attend summer camps and tournaments sponsored by the sneaker companies with the hopes that they both attend colleges that have agreements with those companies and then continue to wear the product should they continue their careers professionally.
“I never thought that shoes would be the reason you recruit players,” Pitino said in 2014. “It’s a factor. It’s a factor. I think we need to deal with that. I think we need to get the shoe companies out of the lives of young athletes. I think we need to get it back to where parents have more of a say than peripheral people. But that’s easier said than done. I don’t know how to do that. It’s like trying to get the [recruiting] runners out of the game. I know we try to do our best to do that, but I don’t know, I don’t know how to do that.”
He never was able to figure that out, and it led to his downfall.
Hurricane Maria (left) and Hurricane Lee (right). Maria’s winds are much weaker than Lee, but it’s a huge storm. (NOAA/NASA RAMMB/CIRA)
The most energetic hurricane month on record continues, with two named storms still spinning in the Atlantic Ocean and four days left until October. Hurricane Maria is on its 11th day — one week after devastating Puerto Rico as a Category 4. Hurricane Lee, no threat to land, will also add to the month’s record-breaking stats as it spins east of Bermuda.
For the first time in 10 days, Maria weakened briefly to a tropical storm on Wednesday morning. By 11 a.m., the storm had regained its hurricane wind speeds. The center was 165 miles east of the Outer Banks on Wednesday, but the wind field was quite large; tropical storm force winds extended an average of 210 miles from the center and were reaching into extreme eastern North Carolina.
Mariarsquo;s wind swath from when it formed on Sept. 16 through Wednesday morning. Tropical storm force winds are shaded in orange, while hurricane force winds are shaded in red. (NOAA/NHC)
Tropical storm and storm surge warnings are still effect for the Outer Banks, but conditions will improve by Thursday as the storm drifts further from the coast. Maria will start to move northeast on Wednesday, then rapidly accelerate into the frigid waters of the northern Atlantic by the weekend.
Due to its size and being virtually stalled offshore, much of the Mid-Atlantic coast will see elevated tide levels and large swells Wednesday, resulting in some storm surge inundation and coastal erosion from Ocean City to Virginia Beach and down the Outer Banks. High tide in these areas will occur in the 1-3 p.m. time frame, so any amount of storm surge will add onto that normal water level.
Wind field from NOAA’s high-resolution HRRR model valid on Wednesday morning. (tropicaltidbits.com)
Roughly 1,200 miles to the east, Hurricane Lee is the exact opposite of Maria. It’s a tiny storm. Tropical-storm-force winds only extend 50 miles from the center — just a quarter of the size of Hurricane Maria, but its maximum wind speed is 115 mph, making it a Category 3 and the season’s fifth major hurricane (Category 3 or stronger).
Lee is not near land and will remain safely over the open ocean, east of Bermuda.
The last season to have five major hurricanes was 2010, and before that, 2008 had five, 2005 had seven and 2004 had six.
Infrared satellite loop of Hurricane Lee. The eastern edge of Tropical Storm Mariarsquo;s cirrus canopy can be seen on the left.
A well-deserved break in hurricane activity looks likely for at least the next week. The last day with zero tropical cyclones in the Atlantic was Aug. 11 — which was a one-day break between storms. We may have zero again on Oct. 1, ending a 50-day span of nonstop action.
As we shift into October, so too does the region of most-likely hurricane formation. At this point our attention shifts to the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. This season is only 75 percent complete, so it’s important to keep an eye on the tropics and the supplies stocked up.
Enthusiasm about cutting taxes was palpable at times. When Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois, the tax policy chairman on the committee, detailed plans to dump the A.M.T. and estate taxes, the audience in the room erupted in cheers.
Democrats and progressive groups, meanwhile, swiftly denounced the tax plan as a false promise to the middle class.
“If this framework is all about the middle class, then Trump tower is middle-class housing,” said Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. “It violates Trump’s tax pledge that the rich would not gain at all under his plan by offering sweetheart deals for powerful CEOs, giveaways for campaign coffers and a new way to cheat taxes for Mar-a-Lago’s loyal members.”
After months of secret talks, the proposal produced by the so-called Big Six working group provides as many questions as it does answers. Without those details, it is difficult to say whether middle-income families will see the most benefit from the tax overhaul or if it will favor the richest Americans.
On the individual side, the plan would collapse the tax brackets from seven to three, with tax rates of 12 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent, administration officials said. The current top rate is 39.6 percent and the lowest rate is 10 percent.
The framework also gives Congress the option of creating a higher, fourth, rate above 35 percent to ensure that the rich are paying their fair share. But it does not specify what income levels would be associated with the higher rate, what that new rate might be or explicitly direct Congress to implement a fourth bracket.
The plan aims to simplify and cut taxes for the middle class by doubling the standard deduction to $12,000 for individuals and to $24,000 for married couples. That would allow people to avoid a complicated process of itemizing their taxes to claim various credits and deductions. It would also increase the child tax credit from $1,000 to an unspecified amount and create a new $500 tax credit for dependents, such as the elderly, who are not children.
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Provisions such as the alternative minimum tax and the estate tax, a tax on inherited wealth which Mr. Trump has derided over the years, would be gone under the Republican proposal. Most itemized deductions, including those widely used for state and local tax expenses, would also be eliminated. However, the plan would preserve the deductions for mortgage interest expenses and charitable giving and keep incentives for education and retirement savings plans.
The changes to taxation for companies would be equally dramatic. The proposal calls for reducing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, a shift that is intended to make American companies more competitive with their counterparts around the world.
A new tax rate would be created for so-called pass-through businesses. These businesses, partnerships and sole proprietorships whose profits “pass through” to their owners, would be taxed at a rate of 25 percent, not the individual rate of their owners, like under the current law. About 95 percent of businesses in the United States are structured as pass-throughs and they generate a majority of the government’s corporate tax revenue.
As with the individual side, some of the thornier business tax issues remain unaddressed. It will be left to Congress to create safeguards that prevent wealthy individuals from incorporating as pass-through businesses, which would tax their income at a lower rate. Another administration official insisted that measures would be put in place so that there are not “games played” in this regard.
Another big change for companies would be a limitation of the deductibility for corporate interest expenses in exchange for the opportunity to immediately expense business investments. The ability to write these expenses off immediately would last only five years, and the limitations for deducting interest have yet to be determined. This is expected to set off a fight among business groups, many seeking either full deductibility or permanent immediate expensing.
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The plan also calls on the tax committees to eliminate most of the tax credits that businesses currently use. Among those that would remain are the prized tax credit for research and development and the low-income-housing credit, which many Democrats support.
Perhaps the most major yet murky shift on the business side is the move from a worldwide tax system to a territorial tax system. In theory this means that companies would not be taxed on their overseas earnings, but to prevent erosion of the tax base, Republicans plan to impose some form of tax on foreign profits at a rate that has yet to be determined.
The transition to the new system would also include a one-time repatriation tax to encourage companies to bring offshore profits back to the United States. There would be different repatriation rates for different types of assets, but as with many parts of the proposal, the rates would be up to Congress to decide.
Administration officials did not provide a cost estimate for the plan. Members of the Senate Budget Committee have agreed on a budget resolution that would allow for a $1.5 trillion tax cut over 10 years. Studies of similar plans produced by Mr. Trump and House Republicans have been projected to cost $3 trillion to $7 trillion over a decade.
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A preliminary estimate from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that the policies in the framework would cost between $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion over a decade.
The Republicans pitching the plan say economic growth will compensate for lost revenue. During the campaign, Mr. Trump said overhauling the tax code would raise economic growth to 4 percent.
Senator Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican who sits on the finance committee, said he was confident that a growing economy would pay for the tax cuts and that the plan was fiscally responsible.
“This tax plan will be deficit reducing,” Mr. Toomey said.
Conservative groups such as Heritage Action and the Club for Growth cheered the release of the tax plan on Wednesday as a remedy desperately needed to kick-start a sluggish economy.
“The outline is both aggressive and very pro-growth with its rate reductions,” said David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, celebrated the proposal as a plan that would “turbocharge the economy” and make America the best place in the world to invest.
The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, branded the tax proposal as a boon to the rich, calling it “little more than an across-the-board tax cut for America’s millionaires and billionaires” that would do little, at best, for middle-class people.
“It seems that President Trump and Republicans have designed their plan to be cheered in the country clubs and the corporate boardrooms,” Mr. Schumer said.
Social media is providing marketers with an ever-growing litany of media options beyond just display advertising. But which are the most important?
A new study from The Creative Group polled 400 US advertising and marketing executives, asking them which social media trends they expected to have the greatest effect on their advertising and marketing efforts in 2018.
One-third of ad and marketing execs said social messaging would sway their efforts in 2018, making it the top choice among survey respondents.
Video was another trend that many respondents said would play a role in their marketing strategies next year, named by 28% of respondents—an unsurprising outcome.
Meanwhile, influencer marketing, which continues to draw a lot of press attention, was expected to have a large effect by just 11% of respondents. Meanwhile, only 10% thought virtual and augmented reality were sure to affect social marketing strategies.
A separate study by gen.video and Geometry Global, conducted in March and April 2017, found that nine in 10 social network users are influenced to make a purchase after seeing content on social media. And video has the greatest influence of all content types.
The American Bankers Association today announced the winners of the second annual ABA Bank Marketing Video Contest during the Bank Marketing Conference in New Orleans. Taking home the “Best in Show” award was Columbus, Ga.-based Synovus for its video (pictured) depicting a real-life loan customer and his Clydesdale horse. The video received the highest score out of nearly 300 entries by banks of all sizes, and was also the winner in the category for banks with more than $5 billion in assets.
Also recognized as winners in individual asset categories were FNBC Bank, Ash Flat, Ark.; JD Bank, Lake Charles, La.; and the Bank of Missouri, Perryville, Mo. “Video marketing is a game changer and a key strategy for customer engagement in today’s digital age,” said ABA EVP Jim Edrington. “From entertaining to informing to inspiring, this year’s winners took highly creative approaches to tell their story and build brand awareness.”
(BUSINESS MARKETING) As it turns out, video marketing isn’t an effective tool for everyone. To best serve your business, figure out if your audience think video is hot or not.
Fickle fickle
For a hot minute, we’ve been hearing marketing gurus hammer home the point that video is the wave of the future, for several reasons.
However, this magic pill is anything but, and it’s important for your business to understand when video does and does not work.
PIVOT!!
According to data gathered and published in a piece by Digiday, a pivot to video didn’t reverse declining traffic trends amongst publishers who switched to video. They demonstrated the cases of Mic, Fox Sports and Vocativ, all of whom laid off editorial staff to invest in video.
Data from comScore shows their traffic numbers drop by at least 60 percent year-over-year.
Additionally, “over the past six months, the Alexa ranks of Vocativ, Fox Sports and Mic have also plummeted.”
The story isn’t all doom and gloom; Digiday rightfully points out organizations that have seen traffic lifts correlated with a focus on video, such as Vox Media, Buzzfeed, Bleacher Report and Mashable. However, it still leaves you wondering, what gives? Let’s dive into the potential causes and discuss some ways to avoid those pitfalls.
Ahead of the Curve, Or Behind the Ball?
Content exhaustion is real and problematic for media companies. Video is no exception, and many brands that are reportedly doubling down on video are too late to the party. The party began in early 2016, “when Mashable laid off editorial staffers to focus on video.” This was likely spurned by the fact that “video ad spend grew to more than $10 billion in the U.S. last year.”
Buzzfeed followed earlier this year, while several publishers mentioned above didn’t make a major pivot until this summer.
Naturally, as more players enter the space, congestion creates competition, a race to the bottom of the public attention span where fewer people win in the end. Be aware of how that competition affects your strategic decision-making. If you’re late to your industry’s video party, you’ll need to be creative and lean to win the day. If you’re in a space with less competition, you’re in a better position to dominate video content in your vertical.
Social Media, the Double Edged Sword
This point can apply to other distribution platforms, but Facebook is the best example. On the one hand, these platforms (and their users) love video content. Publishers can build and reach a large audience through this channel. However, much like publishing on Medium, content companies lose a lot of equity in return. Using audiences on different platforms for monetization is much harder than it is on owned and operated properties. Furthermore, companies can’t control how Facebook lets them play in their sandbox, and we’ve already seen several examples of the squeeze that occurs when they start pushing you out.
Naturally, the key here is to diversify; look for ways to pull referring traffic in from different sources. Also, make sure users have a reason to come back to your site when they watch certain videos. By relying on Facebook as a way to capture top-of-funnel attention, you can be shielded from some of the consequences of dependence on their platform.
Taiwanese airline EVA Airways has launched a social media contest targeting Malaysian travellers who dream of visiting America. The online contest, titled “Chapati in the USA”, is conceptualised by EVA Airways’ social marketing agency Kingdom Digital.
The campaign aims to help the airline create awareness about its flight routes from Kuala Lumpur to multiple destinations in North America. The winner with the most creative photo will receive two return flight tickets to any destination in North America that EVA Airways flies to, such as Chicago, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
To help kick-off the contest, EVA Airways released a short video on its official Facebook page. The video tells the story of a Malaysian man who loves everything American, so he decides to dress head to toe in clothing inspired by the USA flag and go about his daily life – but with an American twist. For example, he orders a chapati which he then turning it into a pizza. Or taking a photo with the iconic KL Tower but pretending it to be the Statue of Liberty.
Take a look for yourself:
This contest will run until 31 October 2017 and it urges contestants to snap a photo of themselves doing something Malaysian with an American twist.
Au Yong Yoon, assistant manager at EVA Airways, said apart from promoting its routes, the airline hopes this social campaign will inspire and ignite the interest of Malaysians to experience North America themselves.
Vimeo has agreed to acquire live video solution Livestream. The company has also rolled out its own live product to offer professional live streaming capabilities directly through its platform, marking its first move into live streaming. When the acquisition concludes, Livestream’s offering will be integrated with Vimeo’s, according to a press statement.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed and are expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. Meanwhile, some clients which have worked with Livestream include Dow Jones, Philadelphia Eagles, Tough Mudder and Spotify. Marketing has reached out to Vimeo for additional comment.
According to Anjali Sud, CEO at Vimeo, live streaming was a top request from its creator community this year. The new offering will hence allow creators to capture, edit, stream, and archive live events, as well as host, distribute and monetise videos, all in one workflow which aims to be seamless.
The move into live streaming will also allow Vimeo to have a more complete video solution in the market, allowing it to match up with YouTube’s live stream services, which was launched in 2011 with YouTube Live.
“With the launch of Vimeo Live and the addition of Livestream’s impressive team and innovative product suite, we can empower a diverse range of creators to produce beautiful live experiences with professionalism and ease,” Sud added.
“Together, we will be able to go faster and further in making live video a truly ubiquitous form of communication for businesses and organisations,” Mark Kornfilt, Livestream co-founder and CEO, added.
Creators using Vimeo Live will be able to see who is attending their event by enabling email capture in the player, turn on live chat, and view live and archived stats to track performance. The addition of Livestream’s syndication tools will also allow live distribution across social platforms in the future, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and Twitter, the press statement read.
It also aims to help creators with all aspects of their video hosting and live streaming workflow – from broadcasting and auto-archiving to storage, management and collaboration to distribution, marketing and analytics. Post-event videos can also be monetised directly to audiences worldwide as a rental, purchase or subscription. Moving forward, Vimeo will also integrate live with its over-the-top (OTT) technology, enabling live content in branded apps across iOS, Android, Roku, Amazon, Samsung, and more.
