Vogue Marketing, Junior Investigators, and Bad-vertising: this week on Fresh Powder

Insta-glam

Using social media to sell products isn’t new, but Vogue is doing it a little differently. First, they’re not selling weight loss tea or those weird gummy bears that make your hair grow, they’re selling a publication, and they’re using Instagram stories to do it. With Instagram stories, the staff at Vogue (and they’ve put the task on everyone’s plate, so there’s a nice range of content, which is a win for Vogue,) can go behind the scenes and play around with different perspectives. That’s cool, because it mitigates the highly curated feeling of most fashion mags’ social media pages. It works, too. They’ve gained a million followers in a year. And as we all know, the more people a publication can engage, the better. Might be worth a try.

Fake News Finders

Here’s a neat thing: these public school kids, (and they’re young, like, pre-middle school), are learning about fake news. They met for an after-school session of Fake News Finders, a program put on by Mighty Writers, and one that’s dedicated to teaching kids about fake news. As a group, they check out examples and learn the hallmarks of fake news, and they talk about the importance of judicious news sharing. It’s cool, because these kids are tomorrow’s writers and news consumers, and if they can learn to spot fake news early, it’s going to benefit everyone.

Bad-vertising

It’s a struggle: advertising is essential for large (and small) publications, because brand recognition is a thing, and advertising is how to do it. So, advertising on huge platforms like Youtube and Google seems like a no brainer. But, it’s not. With auto-tech advertising based on user browsing habits, Google and You-Tube promise advertisers huge reach. But, currently, there’s very little control over paired content. So an ad can show up on a video rife with hate speech (or whatever else), just as easily as it can show up on any other kind of content. That’s a problem, and huge advertisers are pulling away from Google and You-Tube for that reason. But brands need Google and You-Tube, and the platforms need advertisers, so the good news is that everyone involved is invested in coming up with a solution.

Obama Obsession

It’s been a year of political unorthodoxy, and it looks like Obama’s post-presidential life is no different. But, mostly, it’s different because we’re obsessed with it. The Obama’s are vacationing a lot (well-earned) and they’re staying in DC until their second daughter graduates high school. Pretty much every move they make is under intense scrutiny, and, as we all saw with the false wiretapping claims, some individuals are intent on roping the Obamas back in, even after their political tenure is complete. But it sounds like the Obama’s plan to stay civically engaged (that’s also new-ish, for a former president), so we’ll be able to indulge our collective Obama obsession for the foreseeable future.

This also happened last week: If you’ve never been told you look tired, you might not know why people don’t like it. This story is for you. If you have been told you look tired, you will have many more emoji options with which to express yourself frustration. And: cute pets. You’re welcome.