December 11, 2023
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Amidst the cost of living crisis, it would seem that everyone is equally as strapped for cash as one another, with even financial giants like Elon Musk looking for a quick quid or two.
And, whilst it’s fairly unlikely we’ll find him down Aldi’s ‘Starbuy’ aisle looking for a buy-one-get-one-free deal on long-burn logs, he’s taken to try and monetise over on Twitter.
It’s no secret that the platform has been on its arse for a while now, which Musk nods as teething problems, but hey like he says, “he will make mistakes as he goes about trying to right the ship”.
Frankly, it’s giving Titanic.
Ultimately the big cash idea is to ‘verify user views’, but what does that mean exactly? Good question. At £8 a pop, users will verify their account, gain a blue tick and achieve verified human identity. In turn, weeding out spam activity and sussing those tick-less bots; because what hacker could possibly afford to verify the thousands of fake accounts?
Not in the Cozzie Livs, anyway.
So whilst this may eventually deter the mass-botter, for the concept to work the majority must be verified and personally we don’t see the average person willing to line Elon Musk’s pockets with eight of their hard-earned pounds right now.
Dig out your thermals, Dear Readers, air-fry your remaining ounce of hope for society and whilst you’re at it, don’t forget to verify your Twitter account for £8.
Is it madness or is it just Musk?
Have you seen the new Snapchat AR campaign yet?
Mentally prepare yourself and you can watch it here.
Welcome back and no, we promise you’re not high.
Ah, where to begin? The new AR campaign has left us all feeling like our brains have been thrown in a blender but is that the whole point?
The Ad poses the question “what if you could see the world in a more interesting way” and an interesting way is certainly Snap’s zany creative style here.
The state-of-the-art in-app technology is already storming their competition; with over 1.5 user subscriptions, 72% of active Snapchat users already engaging with AR elements in the app every day, a huge aligned partnership with Apple and every viral AI trend originating from Snapchat.
You have Snap to thank for the iconic crying-face Kardashian dub.
Snapchat says “When you start to see the things you love in a whole new way, you want to share them with the world - which in turn helps us all see ourselves and each other a little more clearly”. Maybe that’s true, but we’re not sure it’s quite that deep.
Their campaign title “Wait’ll you see this” outs the new tech’s leading draw. Intrigue. Sure we’ve never seen our Gran with a horse head, so why wouldn’t we want to, given the opportunity and seductive lure of our peers doing the same almost competitively across their social platforms?
Is this the kind of clever click-bait marketing we should all aspire towards, whereby leading people into an app in a daze of confusion and enigma retains users and further, engages them so deeply that it persuades them to invest in the app itself?
We’ll say it, we’re impressed. Impressed and very confused.
Back in December 2019, as our beloved Christmas adverts screened; British retailer, John Lewis and Adam&EveDDB, (their longstanding partnering Ad Agency) introduced Excitable Edgar to the world. Or so we thought…
Is the tale of a dragon whose excitable fiery sneezes land him in trouble, redeemed by a cooked Christmas dinner for the townspeople, a tale already told?
Whilst the campaign was a booming success for John Lewis, gaining so much traction that the beloved character made his way into a print and was published in a children’s book for the brand; Author Fay Evans claims that her 2017 work ‘Fred The Fire-Sneezing Dragon’ was plagiarised by John Lewis and has been subsequently been taken to The High Court.
But who's naughty and who's nice?
A spokesperson for John Lewis has said “as the trial is imminent we are unable to comment other than to say that we strongly dispute the allegations being made against us.”
We wholeheartedly support artists protecting their work, but unless Evans can prove that the agency had access to her work prior to the campaign launch and the publishing of the book, her chances of winning the case are looking pretty slim. That said, it’s rumoured that with the case already spanning over three years, she is likely to have already received some settlement negotiations. The hearings will take place next week and we’ll be following the case to discover the outcome.
What’s your verdict?
