Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegal, spoke at an event in NYC on Tuesday to discuss the mobile app’s success and reputation. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Snapchat, it allows users to take & send photos (and short videos) to other Snapchat connections. The catch? The recipient can only see the image or video for a short, predetermined matter of seconds. After the view-timer expires, it’s gone – forever. Well, kind of. The only way to keep a hold on the short-lived picture is to screenshot while viewing it. Although, in that case, Snapchat will notifiy the sender that their recipient has screenshot their image. No way of being sneaky here!

But moving along, this new (and sometimes risque) messaging platform has a unique view when discussing its millions of users’ personal data. In short, Spiegal believes, “Delete is the Default.” Basically, not keeping record of the images sent each day is a direction Spiegal thinks will become the new trend for contemporary app developers. In order to keep the integrity of the platform for each user, it’s important to keep data-anonymity.

This raises concern from marketers: what do explorative social media marketers, advertisers, etc. learn and leverage in terms of psychographic and demographic data? Essentially, if there’s no record of past data, how can we learn, improve and correct mistakes from the past?

We get it, it “acknowledges personal growth” by not having to look back at embarrassing photos from years ago. But to be honest, looking back at embarrassing photos is an even better way to acknowledge personal growth. Don’t you think?

Charlize Theron

Lil Jon

Brad Pitt

So whether you agree or disagree to hoarding a bunch of data from the past, Snapchat still serves as a fun, new way of sending creative pictures and videos.
Happy Snapchatting all!

Watch and be impressed. #smartmarketing

How awesome is it that we’re only a few blocks away from Petco Park? I mean, especially on a gorgeous, sunny, opening day event at Petco Park. It’s also a good thing some of us decided on taking a stroll down there for lunch. I highly suggest getting to East Village in Downtown San Diego today (if you can miraculously find parking). There’s an awesome line-up of food trucks, a mini motocross event hosted by Red Bull, and a bunch of little freebies for you to win at random booths.

After feeling pretty full from all that delicious food, I can only imagine how the next few hours back at the office are going to be like.
Maybe a little something along the lines of this:

Yeah, I feel it already. Happy Tuesday, everyone!

When concepting and designing any asset for any campaign, be sure to think about the bottom line, ie: what do you want the consumer to do when they interact with your brand?

People are, generally speaking, simple creatures so- break it down for them. Don’t give their eyes too much to focus on. Be systematic. Be clear. In essence, don’t over complicate and you’ll be just fine. Use the following as an example.