Red Zmudzien

Social Content • Marketing • Brand Strategy

Red is a former journalist turned marketer with 15+ years of experience both on the agency side working with entrepreneurs to public companies, as well as in-house working with brands on marketing strategy and hands-on content creation that supercharges brands, builds community, and drives customer acquisition.

  • Facebook Takes a Page Out of Snapchat’s Playbook (Again) With Ray-Ban Stories

    Timing is everything in marketing. Take QR Codes for example, which have literally been around for decades. When mobile devices and social media first started to really take off there was a push, mainly from marketers, to drive adoption of QR codes. The problem though was that at the time users still needed a separate QR Code Reader app and as we all know any additional friction for the consumer is often a death knell. Years later Apple integrated the ability to read QR Codes right into the iPhone camera, which made everything more seamless. But it wasn’t until the Covid pandemic that QR Codes finally took off and maximized their potential. Why? With people looking for more contactless options while out to eat, QR Code menus were the perfect coupling of timing and necessity.

    I provide that diatribe to hammer home the fact that Augmented Reality glasses are far from a new idea, but Facebook (and Ray-Ban) are hoping to run where Google Glass fell.

    Snapchat seemed primed to take the AR sunglasses baton years ago with the release of Spectacles back in 2016, but they never gained mainstream popularity despite a fever dream of a guerrilla marketing campaign that involved vending machines randomly popping up across the country.

    Old heads like me who bought the original Snapchat Spectacles are looking at the new Facebook Ray-Ban Stories like Miranda Hillard in Mrs. Doubtfire.

    Facebook is no stranger to borrowing ideas from its competitors (see: Instagram Stories) so the social media giant is hoping to build upon the missteps of Snap in its latest venture. Snap Spectacles were nearly impossible to buy for months after launch due to an intentional and artificial scarcity and it may have been turned off curious customers who swiftly moved onto the next thing. Credit to Facebook too for the smart decision to partner with legendary sunglasses brand Ray-Ban to design something that people will actually want to wear beyond just the techies.

    Time will be the ultimate judge here, but Facebook isn’t merely dipping its toes into the AR and VR market, rather its dove headfirst into the space with a huge bet on the metaverse. So with enough clout, marketing savvy, and some good timing Facebook could be the ones to finally bring AR glasses mainstream.

  • Anchor Just Made Podcasting That Much Easier for WordPress Bloggers

    Introverts rejoice! Anchor just announced a pretty substantial new feature for WordPress bloggers that may be wanting to jump into podcasting but aren’t exactly the loquacious type. If you’ve got a WordPress blog, then you’ve got a podcast. It remains to be seen how accurate the text to speak audio will actually sound, but this does provide a pretty substantial boost for bloggers. Even if you are totally fine with speaking and promoting yourself, podcasting can take a lot of time to plan topics, schedule guests, record, edit etc. With this new feature from Anchor though you can take your stream of consciousness blog and turn it into a quick podcast without having to even buy a mic. Again, the devils in the details so this new feature will be shelved pretty quickly if the text to speak is inaccurate or overly robotic sounding, but if this goes smoothly it could be a big tool for bloggers.

  • Twitter Adds Its Best Feature in Years in Retweets With GIFs

    How many times have you wanted to retweet something, but just couldn’t find words witty enough to give your response proper justice? Sometimes a GIF is the only thing that will do. In its best move since integrating Giphy directly into the app, Twitter added a huge feature; Retweet with GIFs. It opens a huge opportunity for brands that are creative and want to push the limits of the standard 140 280 character limits a normal RT. Here’s to looking at you, Burger King.

  • Spotify Aims to Dominate Podcasting With Anchor Acquisition

    TechCrunch – Spotify is going after podcasts in a major way in 2019.The music streaming service today confirmed that it has snapped up two podcast networks — Gimlet and Anchor — in undisclosed deals…

    The deals are a major push for Spotify, but the writing has been on the wall for those paying attention. We reported last month from CES that Spotify is going after podcasting this year. The company has been going after exclusive shows — at CES it added “Unbothered” from journalist Jemele Hill — while it is also working on specialist ad units around its podcast network.

    We’ve heard Spotify talk a big game on “the future of radio” before, but this time around it is putting money behind its ambitions. The big strategy, beyond catering to the growth of podcasts, is to develop a new channel for consumption of its core business as Courtney Holt, the head of Spotify Studios, told us in January.

    In a move that should put Apple on high alert, Spotify recently acquired the growing DIY podcast platform, Anchor. As podcasts become more prevalent, everyone from Joe Rogan’s million of podcast downloads to the average Joe with just a handful of listens is getting in on the fun. Podcasts are nothing new, but Anchor made the medium more easily accessible than it ever had been before. In the past users would need to create RSS feeds, pay for hosting on their website etc. It’s a blindspot in the podcast market that Apple never effectively tackled.

    With Anchor though it’s as easy as pressing record and uploading the audio, which is then distributed to podcast platforms on your behalf like iTunes, Google Play…and Spotify. They quickly have filled a void in the market. There was an appetite from users that wanted to get into podcasting without having to be an audio engineer. Spotify recognized that and jumped at the chance to bring Anchor into it’s growing audio portfolio. Don’t be surprised when consumers are soon listening to their podcasts primarily via Spotify after years of iTunes being the default provider.

  • How Can Brands Localize Their Message?

  • Flashback: Facebook Testing “Stories”

    A flashback to a discussion in February where we previewed and predicted what we expected to come from Facebook Stories, which are now globally available.

  • Voice AI: Google Home and Alexa

  • Discussing Voice and Image Recognition

  • Instagram Stories vs Snapchat Stories

  • Chatting on Instagram Stories Ads