Natalie Munio
Burger King dressed up as McDonald’s for Halloween, mobile has taken over the world (well, the internet that is), Vine is shutting down and the internet is mad about it, National Geographic goes “further” than just TV, and Chipotle tackles TV ads for first time since the 2012 Grammys.
Read below for this week’s top stories in marketing and advertising.
Burger King just took getting into the Halloween spirit to an entirely new level, and poked some fun at the brand’s biggest rival while they did it. One of the chain restaurant’s locations in Queens, New York decided to disguise itself as “the ghost of McDonald’s” for the holiday, complete with a billowing white sheet that covered the entire building and the name “McDonalds” scrappily spray painted on its side. The storefront also boasted a sign teasing, “Boooo! Just kidding, we still flame grill our burgers. Happy Halloween.” Ouch. A series of photos and videos from passersby flocked the internet, as well as a “Scariest BK” video on the Burger King YouTube channel, suggesting BK headquarters had a thing or two to do with it.
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t have a smartphone these days. Tweeting, posting, sharing, watching – whatever it is, most of what we do on our phones today requires use of the internet. That’s why a recent report from Zenith tracked patterns in 60 countries that predicts 75 percent of internet access globally this year will be from mobile. To put that in perspective, that number is up from 40 percent from just 4 years ago in 2012. That number isn’t so shocking, however, when you account for exactly what percentage of people own and use smartphones – a total of 56 percent globally, according to the Zenith report. The study also revealed numbers for ad spend, noting that by 2018, mobile will make up 60 percent of all internet advertising.
The app that gave the world peanut-butter baby and Logan Paul will soon be no more. Twitter announced on Thursday it will shut down the video sharing app Vine in the “next coming months.” Vine has struggled to compete with its competitors, like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which have taken many of Vine’s top influencers away from the platform and offer users similar video sharing services. According to Business Insider, nearly half of Vine’s top 9,725 accounts had either deleted their profiles or stopped posting since the beginning of 2016. Twitter has said Vine remains “an important part of our strategy” and plans to keep Vine’s website up indefinitely for users and viewers to access their favorite 6-second videos from the past.
Building from the internet frenzy surrounding the soon-to-be-released Leonardo DiCaprio documentary about climate change, The National Geographic Channel has announced a global rebrand for the entire company, which will include dropping the “Channel” from its name and introducing “Further” as its tagline. The brand will now have a consistent brand logo across all platforms and will also redesign its magazine, website, and all digital and social channels. Abandoning “Channel” from its name came after the brand’s realization that people were consuming content on more than just the television network. A spokesperson said the “Further” tagline embodies National Geographic’s “relentless pursuit to go deeper” and its position as a leader in “science, exploration and adventure.”
According to AdAge, Chipotle will broadcast television ads for the first time since 2012 after the Mexican food chain has continued to face declining sales. Chipotle sales have continued to plummet following the recent E. coli outbreak that affected several states just one year ago. “Ingredients Reign,” a spot adapted from an online video series, has already run in select states. The campaign, led by GSD&M, hopes to call attention to its ingredients, namely its “responsibly-raised meats.” The last time Chipotle launched a television ad was during the Grammys in 2012 with a heart-wrenching video, “Back to the Start” which later won a Cannes Lions Grand Prix award.