(Note: This post originally appeared on the PNConnect blog)
Every week here in the Porter Novelli New York office, where our PN Connect digital team creates and executes content strategy for healthcare clients including Cardinal Health and Johnson & Johnson, financial institutions like Sammons, and consumer goods like Bel Brands and HP Inc, our team gets together to share research, product and platform developments and content marketing best practices. It’s kind of a digital show and tell, and it allows us to step outside of our inboxes and apply some critical thinking to what’s happening in the content marketplace. And in turn, we’d like to share them with our digital colleagues across the PN Connect global network and our clients.
AMARIS MODESTO
Amaris is responsible for managing digital programs from ideation through launch for clients including Regeneron, Amazon, Johnson and Johnson, and Sammons Financial Group. She contributes across channels, including web analytics, UX design and development, and user experience.
Internet privacy is a long-standing negotiation between law enforcement and the public interest, with varying implications to freedom of expression and creativity. In a bold move this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced his opposition to the FBI court order that demands the company circumvent security software on San Bernardino attacker Syed Farook’s phone. This order goes strongly against Apple’s commitment to the security of their customer’s data – which they protect even from their own staff of engineers who developed the software.
To hack Farook’s phone, the order calls for Apple to build a new version of their iOS software that, per Cook, would “undeniably create a backdoor” and “undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.” Specifically, the government would have an unlimited number of tries to enter a password to gain access to Farook’s iPhone 5c. Currently, if a user enters a password incorrectly more than 10 times, the phone wipes itself. Should this roll out, it would be the first anti-encryption software of its kind, setting a precedent that could open up the floodgates to the millions of hackers Apple works hard to guard against, and not to mention, Android is likely the next FBI target.
In an open letter to customers, Cook advises us to approach this FBI order from the severity of its long-term implications to internet security and warns us against being blindsided by the FBI’s claim that the hack would only be applied in this single instance. A move like what is being proposed strengthens the big brother relationship that heightened government surveillance supports; a relationship that whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning have bravely exposed, with Snowden himself Tweeting that “this is the most important tech case in a decade.”
This is the most important tech case in a decade. Silence means @google picked a side, but it’s not the public’s. https://t.co/mi5irJcr25
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 17, 2016
Support for Cook has come in many forms, specifically on social media, since the Wednesday announcement. Dozens of privacy activists held demonstrations outside of Apple stores in downtown San Francisco. Charlie Furman, campaign manager for Fight for the Future insists “‘The result here is not so much a question of if this golden key will wind up in the wrong hands, but when? And when it does, how much damage will be done?’” Many are unwilling to back down until the order is reversed.
And while opinions vary in the very heated public discussion that’s taken place since the order, the importance of this dialogue and the outcome of this case could not be more pivotal to the future of digital privacy.
GUILLERMO KOPP
Guillermo Kopp is a brand-new member to the Porter Novelli New York Team working as a Sr Analyst in the Analytics and Insights team. He looks to leverage his experience in healthcare and analytics in providing client solutions.
Recently Amazon Web Services launched two new offerings geared towards game development. In order to generate publicity for their new offering, they’ve included a clause in their service agreement that would void it if the zombie apocalypse ever materialized. The “zombie clause” was picked up by media, including NBCNews.com; the outlet posted the following headline on Feb, 10, 2016: “Amazon Waives Terms of Service in Event of Zombie Apocalypse.”
This was a clever marketing tactic targeting potential game developers through an interest that overlaps with the gaming culture. Additionally this marketing play was likely piggybacking off the hype for the mid- season premiere of “The Walking Dead,” which aired on February 14th. The value of the marketing was not just in driving awareness to the new products but also in branding AWS as edgier, creative and in touch with their audience.
ALEXANDRA PERRO
Alex works on social media strategy and campaigns for Porter Novelli’s pharmaceutical clients, including Johnson & Johnson. She has supported paid media, content development and analytics for clients including the Hartford and Endicia.
“Zoolander 2”’s original Instagram campaign shows just how effective marketing can be when your medium fits your message. Instagram was made for the iconically vain characters in “Zoolander” and the satirical portrait of the fashion industry it paints. By using Instagram in the shameless, self-promotional manner that Zoolander himself would, the film’s marketers succeed not only in producing funny and engaging promotional content, but reinforcing the film’s humor and narrative itself and savvily connecting both to a digital marketing platform.