Sonic Branding Archives - Beyond Social Media

Alexa’s Brand Voices

By David Erickson | February 15, 2020 |

Episode 296: BL and David discuss Google’s Project Witness that uses virtual reality to generate empathy for jailed children; Amazon’s program to create actual brand voices to play on its Echo smart speaker; ASCII art of refugee programmers; tech titans’ efforts to combat coronavirus misinformation; augmented reality Google Maps; Facebook’s bug bounty program; Chrome’s website security deadline; reviews in Google Search Console; a glaring user experience fail in Adobe Acrobat; Target’s Minnesota Badgers miscue; …and much, much more..

Spotify’s Playlists for Dogs

By David Erickson | January 22, 2020 |

Episode 262: BL and David discuss Bing’s new business and persona pages; new LinkedIn features; Spotify podcast and playlists for dogs; Google allowing branding in search; TuneIn’s new sonic logo; clever UX; the return of Gary Larson’s Far Side; Fleeceware in Google Play; e-ticketing brings the end of paper tickets; Kohler’s creepy bathroom guy…and much, much more.

How China Censors American Companies

By David Erickson | October 11, 2019 |

Beyond Social Media - US Companies Cave To China, Episode 284

Episode 284: BL and David discuss American companies that cave to Chinese censorship; a Sesame Street character who addresses addiction; Target’s emphasis on audio branding; Siri comes to Spotify; an adorable MSNBC interruption; an augmented reality opera marketing campaign; whiskey pods; Amazon’s initiative to get voice assistants to work together; top sites that fact check fake news; malicious apps in Google Play; Google crowdsourced shopping ads; Google will soon block mixed content; and much, much more.

Facebook's Fake Privacy

By David Erickson | May 5, 2019 |

Episode 268: BL and David discuss Facebook’s dubious commitment to user privacy; the increasing importance of sonic branding; Burger King’s mental burgers; Snapchat’s Holocaust survivor Stories; a clever Big Little Lies commercial; Creative Commons’ visual search emerges from Beta; LinkeIn testing a Services Offered section for profiles; Poynter’s indexing of fake news sites; YouTube Music arrives on Google Home and YouTube lands on Amazon Fire TV devices; a mockery of our smart phone addiction; how extremism spreads through alternative influence networks; Chase Bank’s poor-shaming;…and much, much more.