Stock Photos Put a Damper on Lithuania's Tourism Campaign

Recently, Lithuania's Tourism Department launched the "Real is Beautiful" campaign in order to showcase the beauty of the country to prospective tourists.  Unfortunately, some of the photos of scenery used in the campaign were stock images taken in other countries like Norway, Finland, and Slovakia.

This controversy has caused the head of the Tourism Department, Jurgita Kazlauskiene, to resign from her position.  After the nearly $150,000 bid for the project of two agencies was accepted, a competing company soon noticed that more than half of the 700 photos needed for the campaign were not unique photos.  These photos turned out to have been bought inexpensively from sources such as Shutterstock.

The Tourism Department defended their actions, noting that they didn't object to the use of generalized photos and that they had allowed the contractors the use of stock photos to complete the campaign.  One contractor additionally stated that the location of the photos plays no role and identification is nearly impossible.  This fiasco shows the importance of honesty in social media marketing.  While using stock photos is much easier and cheaper than unique photos, it is more important to uphold the values of the campaign (ironically, "real is beautiful") and avoid a PR nightmare that the agencies, Tourism Department, and Lithuania are currently experiencing.

NBA and Social Media Conduct

Recently, the NBA sent a memo about social media usage to every team in its league.  Among other things, the league wants to put an end to teams mocking or making fun of each other on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.  This surprisingly authentic memo was openly mocked and ridiculed by the media, teams in the NBA, and even teams in other leagues like the NHL.

While the NBA has every right to encourage the use of positive social media for the teams in the league, competition and passion are two of the many factors that draw viewers and fans to the sport. I follow a variety of team accounts (even for teams I don't cheer for) on social media because their posts are engaging and even humorous.  Light-hearted trash talking between social media coordinators is far from the most pressing issue facing the sport of professional basketball in this country, and the silliness of the NBA's memo is being seen through sarcastic tweets like the messages above.

Super Bowl Success with Avocados from Mexico (AFM)

With dozens of brands competing in the Super Bowl each year with short, multi-million dollar advertisements designed to outshine the rest, one of the newest entrants to the Super Bowl advertising space managed to blow away the competition.  Avocados from Mexico ranked 2nd in digital engagement among all brands based on impressions from the first two years of campaigns, and last year's Super Bowl campaign obtained 133,000 social mentions with a staggering 828,000,000 impressions.  However, this year's Super Bowl digital campaign has already delivered over two billion impressions and has many wondering how a smaller brand and budget has managed to maneuver into the social media conversation.\

One of the biggest keys to their success is the focus on their KPIs (key performance indicators). AFM's biggest KPIs are views of the Super Bowl commercial across all platforms (online, mobile, and live) and dominating the social conversation.  With all the clutter that occurs on social media during premiere events, AFM works to focus on the KPIs and help users participate in the conversation.  Another important factor for their success is overthinking.  The digital team constantly held sessions where the user's journey is analyzed and they worked to make interaction and participation as simple as possible, through the use of tools like an app interface.  Finally, AFM worked to humanize the experience as much as possible.  They relied on influencer marketing, including 100,000 brand ambassadors, to provide numerous avenues of engagement in the days leading up to the Super Bowl and the day of the game itself.  AFM proves that low budgets aren't a roadblock in creating and participating in a global conversation about the brand.