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Bro Food, Blue Jeans, Brick & Mortar

Bro Food, Blue Jeans, Brick & Mortar
Where digital meets travel + lifestyle … A collection of can’t-miss news from this week. Sign up to get the TURNER Weekly Download in your inbox every Friday.

Dominos Goes Gross

Most food brands want an elevated, elegant look when promoting on social media. Not Dominos. The venerable pizza chain’s Instagram account is embracing a decidedly ugly aesthetic. Fast Co. Design calls the approach “downright gross bro food, like what you might see waking up at 5 a.m. on the floor of a frat house.” Why take this approach? “It feels more honest and transparent when the images are imperfect,” says Dennis Maloney, Domino’s chief digital officer. “Even if it is a little bit gooey, greasy, the packaging isn’t perfect, and there’s a bit of a burnt spot, that’s the pizza you get. And that makes you think how good it was last time you had it.”

Brick & Mortar Strikes Back

The retail experience is all about the online sphere these days, right? Well, maybe not. Increasingly, e-commerce brands are flipping the script and opening brick-and-mortar stores. Warby Parker, Zappos and Bonobos – all brands that began online – have all been opening their own physical stores for some time now, but more and more of their ilk are following suit. “Regardless of how convenient online shopping is, consumers still like to visualize, try-on and feel products before purchasing them,” writes Digiday’s Ilyse Liffreing. But these brands aren’t saying goodbye to their bread-and-butter online sales – each retail location offers digital touch points and apps that tie in with the physical locations. The lines are being blurred …

Blue Jean Bots

It’s tough to find that perfect pair of jeans, but don’t worry – a new generation of chatbots are here to help. According to Forbes, the Levi’s Virtual Stylist on Facebook Messenger “assists shoppers with fit, rise and stretch for its denim line, all the while aiming to reduce returns by also providing sizing recommendations.” You can search through Levi’s entire catalog, and get inspiration by in the “See it Styled” section. “The Levi's Virtual Stylist is a tool for customer engagement with the brand, but also for driving sales of products,” says Eitan Sharon, CEO of Mode.ai, the company behind the chatbot. “Our unique visual AI technology is a real game changer, as there are many limitations [that] pure text-based search cannot address.”

Camry Emojis

Emoji ad targeting is catching on, and Toyota is taking things to the next level. But wait – what exactly is emoji targeting? Twitter introduced it last year, allowing advertisers to target users who have recently tweeted emojis or engaged with emoji-heavy tweets. It’s a great way to figure out how a person is feeling. So Toyota’s campaign for the 2018 Camry features 83 unique videos designed to match a person’s online mood. If you tweet out a smiley face, then you might get a promoted tweet with a Camry driver with a smiley face as a head. Whether or not that promoted tweet will be met with a frowny face remains to be seen.

Weekly Moment of Zen

Always having trouble finding your suitcase on the carousel? Put a giant photo of your face on it.
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