Trending from G/L: GQ Nails Comedy With Cover

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Trending from G/L: GQ Nails Comedy With Cover

In recent years, many brands have vowed to reject photoshopped images of women in their advertisements to help combat Hollywood’s beauty standards. Brands such as Dove, Arie, ModCloth, Old Navy, Nike and even Seventeen Magazine have all made pledges to represent and celebrate bodies of every type. But one brand that seems to have missed the memo about the anti-photoshop trend is Vanity Fair.

Earlier this year, Vanity Fair received a lot of backlash for their Hollywood 2018 issue. The cover of the magazine featured many A-list celebrities, including Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Michael B. Jordan and Robert De Niro, among others. But what had people talking the most were the three-legged Reese Witherspoon, and a three-armed Oprah Winfrey pictures inside, which showed just how “out of hand” rampant photoshopping has become.

Vanity Fair acknowledged via tweet that Oprah’s third hand was a mistake on their part, but reasoned that they believed Reese Witherspoon’s third leg was the lining of her dress. Whether they were truly accidental or simply ignorant, both actresses laughed at the mistakes.

Now, the gaffe is being brought back into the light – GQ seized the opportunity to poke fun at the incident on the cover of their 2018 comedy issue, released this month.

Featuring comedians Kate McKinnon, Sarah Silverman and Issa Rae, the cover blatantly mocks their sister publication (both GQ and Vanity Fair are a part of Condé Nast Media). They even added in an online post titled “Mistakes Were Made:”

GQ would like to apologize to Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, and Sarah Silverman for the egregious mistakes made in the process of creating the cover for our 2018 comedy issue, the latest in our pantheon of mostly annual love letters to the funniest humans we know. Our intention was to celebrate the three super-funny superstars, who are all that is smart and perceptive and riotous and necessary in comedy right now. We deeply regret that the results violated GQ’s rigorous standards of editorial excellence and the laws of nature.

In an effort to ensure that an error of this magnitude never happens again, and because this sounds like the right thing to say, GQ will be conducting a thorough internal audit of our cover-development process. To demonstrate our commitment to transparency, we will release the results of the review, quietly, in 17 months, on Medium.”

According to a Condé Nast source, “There is mass fury at VF today, the staff and editors are really upset. GQ is spoofing the VF cover which came out with all the Photoshop mistakes, the mysterious extra legs and hands attached to Oprah.” The source goes on to say that the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair was never informed of the GQ cover, and feel that they are being mocked.

Whether you call it mocking or satire, the GQ cover certainly hits a few key points:

  1. They made the cover timely in light of the recent Vanity Fair cover
  2. They’ve brought the messaging of the issue (comedy) to the forefront of the conversation
  3. They’ve brought attention that photoshopping, if used at all, should be done with consideration and deliberation.

Trending from G/L: Engagement is key to Instagram’s new algorithm

Melissa Ross
Digital Content Producer

Trending from G/L: Engagement is key to Instagram’s new algorithm

Back in March of 2016, the world flipped upside down when Instagram put an algorithm in place to change how our content was delivered to us. Previously, posts were shown in chronological order, but with the new algorithm, content became prioritized based on the likelihood that you would engage with it.

Since then, Instagram has been continuously tweaking the algorithm, especially after they found that about 70% of posts were being missed due to an increasingly massive amount of content. Their goal was and still is to bring increased likes and comments to posts, but a lot of brands started seeing a decrease in activity – which bring us to today.

Though Instagram doesn’t publicly release exactly how the algorithm works, they have released key influencing factors on how content is delivered to the end user.  These factors include: how much engagement you’re getting on posts, how long your content is viewed, the time when you post, the type of content, who searches for you and how often, and if your posts are shared via direct messages.

Putting it in layman’s terms

All of these factors revolve around engagement. Engagement = more engagement – it’s a continuous cycle. Once a user engages with a brand, it is more likely that that user will be fed the brand’s other content too.

If you’re not at the point of getting engagement on your brand, then you’re negatively impacted by this algorithm. But we’re here to help with that. Of course, better content will help immensely (don’t know how to take your content to the next level? Let’s talk.), but so will a couple of additional key focuses. AdWeek lists 5 ways of ensuring that your posts are hitting these engagement marks.

  1. Schedule posts for optimal times: When your engagement happens is important. According to studies, photos that receive immediate likes shortly after posting perform better in the long-run.
  2. Call-to-action before the line break: Later, an Instagram marketing platform, suggests that the caption to the photo is almost as important as the photo itself. Be sure you’re prompting both your followers and new visitors to take further action from the get-go.
  3. Hashtags are important: According to Adweek, posts with at least a single hashtag average 12.6% increase in engagement. But don’t go overboard!
  4. Use the newest features: Take advantage of Stories, videos, carousels, Boomerangs, etc. Distribute your content creatively to gain more interest.
  5. Utilize paid advertising: With a successful paid ad strategy, you will be able to build a targeted audience that will ultimately build better engagement.

Don’t go at Instagram marketing alone. Our team can help build your brand a strategy for optimal results. Give us a call.

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