We are thrilled to collaborate with our partner and Brooklyn-based creative agency, The BAM Connection on Redemption Whiskey's recent award-winning campaign. Redemption's “Rye Wit” series was awarded Gold in the Graphis Competition, which recognizes the world's most significant and influential works from the greatest talent in design, advertising, and photography.Our team created the mood board to guide the brand’s overall look and feel, as well as produced the photoshoot for the content used in the launch of this series. BAM designed and implemented the use of sophisticated and insightful dry humor to be the aspirational voice for whiskey aficionados. Take a look at some of our creative below:

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Ran During Hockey Playoffs[/caption]

As of this week, Instagram has started to test the removal of Likes on a small percentage of accounts in the U.S. To find our point of view continue reading below and click here for our July blog post.Overall, we think this is a good thing. There is a health epidemic that needs to be addressed and the effectiveness of ads to influence decision making is through highly targeted, relevant impressions at scale and not on the small percentage of people that Like.As an ad industry, we were obsessed with banner clicks until we learned from the Natural Born Clickers study from comscore and Starcom that 85% of all clicks came from 8% of Internet users who typically had little money and a lot of time on their hands.We are now obsessed with Likes simply because the metric is highly visible. For our latest updates on the Instagram Like news, see below…Q: Will marketers be able to measure Likes if they are not publicly viewable?A: Yes, as long as they are working with the right tech platform like Socialtyze’s Qu Technology that accesses the Likes through the Instagram API to pull the data and report in the same manner as before.Q: What are the results from the previous tests that Instagram ran in Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand?A: A Study by HypeAuditor published on Social Media Today reports that influencers with followings between 5K-20K saw a drop between 3% and 15% in Likes across all seven countries.

A similar effect occurred for influencers with followings of 1K-5K and 100K to 1 MM. Japan was the only country to show an increase in Likes.

While the early tests show that Like counts may decline, we do not feel this devalues the impact of the influencer's ads; it simply forces us to move toward more meaningful measuring sticks.Q: Has Instagram made any more statements on the matter?A: Indeed, they have. Watch Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, in a recent interview below. In sum, he said, "It is about young people. Depressurizing Instagram and making it less of a competition….to make more space to connect with people that they love and things that inspire them most."

Socialtyze was named a Facebook Preferred Marketing Partner earlier this year. Many of our clients have asked us what this partnership provides and how they can benefit. So, we created the following infographic that provides more details. Let us know if we can tell you more!

Weather Patterns Trigger Consumer Purchase Behavior

We all know that weather impacts the way we feel and the way we act. Rain keeps us indoors, can affect our mood and change what we do. We also feel and act quite differently on beautiful sunny days.Did you know that the weather can also affect what and when people buy? For example, pizza deliveries go up on rainy days as does on-demand movie purchasing and when cold weather strikes, pharmacy sales go up.Socialtyze is now working with IBM Watson to help advertisers capitalize on targeting people by zip code based on the weather so that when specific patterns strike, brands can showcase their products in the newsfeed of Facebook and Instagram, prompting them to purchase.This is a gamechanger for brands looking to reach customers during specific weather patterns.This new technology combines the power of weather intelligence from The Weather Company with a cross-channel digital marketing platform. It gathers geographically and seasonally-proprietary weather data and in some cases, customer-specific sales transactional data. It then uses the data to create weather triggers based on conditions that influence consumer behavior.Weather triggers are categorized into three conditions that influence consumer behavior:

• Relative conditions like forecasted rain, heavy rain, high cloud coverage, and inclement weather
• Consumer activities like outdoor activities, grocery shopping, eating out, online shopping, etc.
• Product triggers such as CPG products, food and beverage items, and hair care products to name a few.

The triggers are also relevant to specific locations and seasons, meaning a brand can predict audience needs in target markets in real-time or even months before.Here’s how it works -

1. The tool analyzes data: interprets and normalizes past, present, and future weather in conjunction with industry-leading sources of sales data.
2. Creates triggers: defines condition mixes based on hyper-local data to determine when the weather is most likely to drive consumer purchase or action.
3. Activates media: in real-time across paid social media.

There are many industries that can benefit from this platform and technology. Here are a few case studies across Wine & Pharma:WineIn 2017, $98M wine sales were driven by weather.IBM Watson analyzed sales data and weather conditions during winter in different regions and found that nearly half of 2017 weather-driven wine sales occurred in winter. Ultimately, this data helped wine brands know when they should activate their campaigns to drive results.

PharmaceuticalA popular retail giant sought to maximize their share or revenue from health care related products. The retailer took advantage of the technology to reach consumers when and where symptoms were prominent, or where prescriptions were most likely to be filled.The retailer was able to reach the right consumers in the right moments, and thus succeeded in driving consumers in-store for health care medications, along with notable foot traffic lifts including:

• Rx Total Flu resulted in an 11.29% lift
• Cough & Cold Symptoms resulted in a 24.39% lift

Another dry eye relief product also leveraged triggers and audience targeting to reach relevant consumers and drive consideration of their product, resulting in a 28% Lift in Purchase Intent for the products, 3x the Health/OTC intent benchmark. The campaign also yielded a sustained lift in purchase intent from campaign launch to campaign completion.In summary, this tool paired with optimized paid media targeting has the power to impact your bottom line by solving the part of the equation of serving the right content, to the right person, at the right time.Source: IBM Watson & Nielsen

Humans are born storytellers, it's what we do. We yearn to hear them, watch them and share them. Every culture for thousands of years has a way they've told their stories. From elders story-telling around a fire, to ancestors chipping away at stone walls to weave a tale - stories have made impressions.We are no longer page turning. In this digital age, stories are more important than ever. It's no surprise after all, our eyes are now constantly scrolling through social media at lightning speed, and from time to time something interesting flashes beneath our fingers and we stop scrolling. As marketers that’s exactly what we want to happen.Stories are a powerful tool for brand awareness. Content marketing professionals who use Instagram and Facebook stories as part of their strategy have their poker in the fire and each click/tap is a strike. Stepping away from the traditional news feed, Stories form a more modern sharing habit - While brands are catching on, there is much more growth to be had! Let’s take a look at some important stats:

• 500MM+ people use stories every day
• 38% of people say smartphones are the device they use most to watch video
• 75% of all mobile data traffic will be video by 2020
• Videos hold 5x more attention than static images

(Techcrunch)These statistics are exciting AND MOTIVATING! Here are some tips to think about when creating a story and 2 Famous Brand Examples:

• Will my story stand out? Does it create an impact? Does it grab my attention?
• Is the story easy to understand and easy to digest?
• Was it worthy of my time? Does it make me smile, laugh, think, feel or learn something new?
• Does it deliver the message quickly? (the 3-second rule!)

J.CrewJ.Crew teased the launch of their new rose-colored sunglasses and with only 50 pairs available during the pre-sale, the company created a limited-time offer:Takeaway: Try running a contest, promoting a sale, or offering a giveaway through Instagram Stories. This type of post delivers a call to action and your brand the opportunity to reward existing followers.